Ideye arrived at The Hawthorns from Ukrainian outfit Dynamo Kiev for a club-record fee of £10 million, exceeding the £6m sum spent on Stephane Sessegnon.
Irvine - heading into his first Premier League season as a coach following his appointment in June - is hopeful the 25-year-old can reach the lofty heights of countryman Peter Odemwingie, who netted 30 goals prior to his move to Cardiff City in 2013.
And that is without seeing Ideye play live, with Irvine relying on the club's scouting system.
"It would be fantastic if he could have the same impact as Odemwingie did," the 56-year-old said.
"I don't know much about Brown Ideye – I've not seen him live, but people we trust have done.
"It's not necessarily something that is detrimental to me not to have seen him live, though ideally I would like to because that's how I like to do my work.
"But we've done our research on him and what we have done is found decent players in the past in this way."
