BlinkLane Launches the Continuous Innovation Framework

April 18, 2019 Focus area: Continuous Innovation

On April 3, 2019 BlinkLane launched the Continuous Innovation Framework (COIN).

COIN is an open and transparent process to continuously develop, scale and embed innovations in any organization. COIN was developed by BlinkLane Consulting, capturing its extensive experience in corporate innovation combined with best practices in the market in one holistic framework. This framework fits both traditional and agile organizations, can be implemented in phases and is built to scale across the entire organization. COIN accommodates all different types of sustaining and disruptive innovations in products, processes and business models.

Challenges in Innovation

While start-ups are designed to innovate and disrupt, managing and governing innovation within a large organization can be very complex. Most companies struggle to manage the full portfolio of innovations and measure their return on investment. Dispersed management attention, unclear processes and cumbersome budgeting practices create unnecessary overhead, long lead times and, as a consequence, a waste of time and resources and loss of market opportunity. Even when innovation pilots prove successful, the integration of the innovations into the running business is complex. In many cases, innovations lose a large part of potential as there are adapted to fit the existing organizational processes and standards, rather than the other way around. The COIN framework was developed to overcome such challenges and allow organizations to lower the cost of innovation, decrease the time to market and generate a higher return on investment.


A Framework for Continuous Innovation

COIN is designed to help large organizations to successfully and continuously develop, scale and embed innovations and thus create a continuous Return on Innovation. COIN represents an organization-wide, lightweight, and transparent process to: ​

  • Capture innovative ideas from internal and external sources​;
  • Assess feasibility and value for the organization in the shortest possible lead time;
  • Align business operations to scale innovations effectively​;
  • Manage the portfolio of innovations for value​;
  • Align innovation with business strategy.

COIN is an open framework maintained by a dedicated team of innovation professional, and its content is available to for free online. The content is based on best practices in corporate innovation, management literature and scientific research. It is neither prescriptive nor exhaustive and is continuously updated with new insights and learnings. The framework is designed to be implemented in an iterative way; organizations can start with implementing SWICHs or reorganizing their Portfolio and then scale up to leverage the entire framework. A detailed description of  the framework and its elements are available on the https://continuousinnovation.net website; trainings and professional implementation support can be requested from Gladwell Academy and BlinkLane Consulting. Furthermore, every innovation professional is welcome to join to the ‘COIN - Continuous Innovation Framework’ LinkedIn group, where interesting discussions and blogposts are being shared on all areas of innovation management.