Dedicated intermediaries

Dedicated intermediaries play a key role in linking together people, ideas and resources. Examples include the Innovation Exchange in the UK and the Innovation Xchange in Australia. The Innovation Xchange places a ‘trusted intermediary’ inside a range of organisations to tap into an organisation’s tacit knowledge and then share and transfer that knowledge to partner organisations. The model is based on the premise that organisations often underestimate the potential value of innovations being developed by their own staff. They are now developing their model, in partnership with the Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX), to encourage new ways of meeting social needs.

Another example of an innovation intermediary is InnoCentive - an online platform which connects organisations with science related research and development problems (‘seekers’) with people and organisations that have the solutions (‘solvers’). Solvers hand over their solutions with its associated intellectual property in return for a cash prize – anywhere between $5,000 and $100,000.