An independent evaluation into the InnovationXchange (IXC UK®) has conclusively confirmed that the innovation brokerage’s unique approach is helping accelerate innovation between businesses and the research base.

The report concluded that IXC UK is helping business innovate its products, improve the efficiency of its processes and open up new markets in a unique way that adds a new dimension to both the innovation landscape and the UK competitiveness agenda.

The review, commissioned by the University of Birmingham and delivered by economic and social development consultants SQW Consulting, defined and underlined the two key characteristics that not only distinguish the IXC approach from other innovation practitioners, but which it deemed crucial factors in its outstanding success.

Firstly, it underlined IXC UK’s complete commercial neutrality. As IXC’s financial returns are restricted to its fees – it seeks no share of the returns for any suggested collaboration – client confidence in both the process and recommendations is greatly enhanced.

Secondly, SQW highlighted the model’s ability to offer absolute confidentiality. Unlike many other innovation brokerages, IXC Intermediaries are able to search for new opportunities without revealing the identity of clients – or divulging some of the highly sensitive commercial information they are privy to until there is good reason to do so.

Indeed, a large majority of the IXC UK clients questioned by SQW believe it is the model’s ability to combine commercial neutrality with absolute confidentiality that enables the IXC Intermediary to achieve such success: clients say they are able to divulge in-depth information about their key strategic intentions and commercially-sensitive challenges that they would not normally share with outsiders, even their own consultants and advisers. As a result of this in-depth access to their clients’ businesses, the IXC Intermediaries are able to conduct far more effective searches than would otherwise be possible, so speeding up the process of matching an organisation’s needs to those who can provide the answers.

In addition, business clients underlined that IXC UK enabled them to access new ideas from outside their typical areas of business, helping them to stay in touch more easily with the huge diversity of potentially relevant technology developments. IXC UK was seen as a route to addressing specific problems through the effective transfer of solutions from other sectors, as well as stimulating new ideas and creative thinking within the client organisation.

More generally businesses applauded the IXC model for providing additional, high-quality and skilled resource where they tended to lack the time, resource – and even the expertise – to identify and make such relevant connections.

The universities questioned cited a further range of benefits brought about by IXC UK. In additional to the extra resource provided by the intermediary service, HEIs said IXC brought a fresh perspective, new information, contacts and links, as well as playing a key role in shaping the strategic direction of research.

The report was commissioned to evaluate the success of the two-year pilot of IXC UK which was funded by a £3.6 million grant from the Higher Education Innovation Fund and delivered through the University of Birmingham in partnership with IXC Australia. In addition to reviewing IXC UK’s own data, SQW also worked with five partner universities as well as 19 of IXC UK’s business clients to reach its positive conclusions.

Mike Hield, chief executive of IXC UK, welcomed the report’s findings saying, “This independent evaluation underlines what our rapidly-growing network of clients has known for some time now - and that is that IXC UK adds a very real and valuable extra dimension to the innovation process.

“Whilst discretion is not our sole domain – there are many other innovation brokerages and models offering the levels of confidentiality so necessary in such a commercially-sensitive arena – this report confirms that our ability to combine this with the complete commercial neutrality is what differentiates IXC UK so clearly from the many other open innovation models that exist.”

For further information on IXC and the services it offers, please contact Mike Hield, chief executive, or Caroline Bishop, director of operations on +44 (0) 121 414 8776 or log onto www.ixc-uk.com