The idea for ASIX developed in China in October 2006 when Martin Stewart-Weeks from Cisco attended a conference in Beijing on social innovation jointly run by The Young Foundation, British Council and the Chinese Government. Martin learned about the creation of the global SIX network and was keen for Australia to participate. When Dr Geoff Mulgan, Young Foundation CEO, was visiting Sydney in April 2007 Cisco invited a group of non-profit, business and government leaders to attend a forum to learn about social innovation and consider how Australia might become more actively involved in the global development within this field.
During 2008 Steve Lawrence acted as Executive Officer. WorkVentures agreed to auspice a trial, while Cisco, Media Access Australia, and AMP Foundation provided seed funding.

In February a joint forum on Social Innovation, at which ASIX was launched, was hosted by Dr Peter Shergold, CEO of the new Centre for Social Impact at UNSW with special guests Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard and Dr Geoff Mulgan. Over 450 people attended.

ASIX supported a second event in September 2008 in Melbourne with UK innovation expert Charles Leadbeater led by Melbourne Business School and Centre for Social Impact to explore the links between social innovation and public policy. The seminar included contributions from Tom Bentley, senior advisor to the Deputy PM and Glyn Davis, Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

Work has begun on a Social Intermediary Pilot with Innovation Exchange Australia which has developed a service model to enable business innovation through opening opportunities for collaboration to solve business problems or identify and utilise specialist capabilities and underutilised intellectual property resources. ASIX has formed a partnership to test this approach to finding solutions to Australia’s low levels of Workforce Participation and to improving levels of healthy & independent aging.

In late 2008 Australian Social Innovation Exchange Limited was incorporated as an independent non-profit company.