Introduction – what is progress

You want to fix the innovation problem and fire up growth? Then we need to switch from our traditional approach of hunting to increase value, to one where we we’ll hunt to increase progress (since value really emerges through making progress).

Progress is the heart of the progress economy. And we’ll look at it through four guises.

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Seekers may attempt to make progress on their own. However, they often lack the resources to do so successfully. You’ll recognise this: you don’t have the time, or the skills/knowledge, or perhaps some physical capabilities like strength, or…We call this the lack of resource progress hurdle. Seekers need help!

Helping make progress

Responding to such lack of resource, progress helpers arise, offering supplementary resources that aim to help seekers make progress.

Their progress propositions contain two bundles of supplementary resources:

• proposed series of progress-making activities.
• specific mix of offered resources, the progress resource mix

You can think of the former as instructions, owner manuals, processes, recipes etc; Whilst the later are any employees, systems, data, good, physical resources, locations, etc, you interact with to make progress.

When a seeker engages a proposition, progress becomes a joint endeavour. Where the proposition may enable or relieve the seeker (more likely on a continuum between those points). However, the end point now becomes the proposition’s progress offered state. That likely requires a seeker to compromise on their progress sought. Therefore, a seeker needs to judge whether progress offered is sufficiently close to their progress sought.

Additionally, progress propositions give rise to five more progress hurdles a seeker needs to feel are low enough (adoptability, resistance, lack of confidence, misalignment on continuum, equitable exchange).

Seeing the context

Here’s how the concept of progress sits in the context of the progress economy.

It is from this basis of progress, that we we build out our world of progress attempts, progress propositions and the mechanics of equitable service exchange that underpins our world. These together give deep, and actionable, insights into innovation.

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So, to understand progress, we need to look at its four guises, progress as a:

• verb
• state
• noun
• state transition

Whilst progress as a verb is the natural main take away, we’ll benefit from starting with looking at progress as a state.

Progress as a State

Can you define value? It’s more complicated than you may first think. In the progress economy we discover it‘s better to focus on progress (we see value emerging as progress is made).

A large reason for doing this is that it is easier, and more actionable, to define progress compared to value. And the starting point is to understand progress as a state.

Progress, as a state, is a snapshot of progress at a point in time. We can also see it as a measurement of progress.

It’s made up of the following three, equally important, elements:

• functional – an action (people-, possession-, mind-, intangible-processing)
• non-functional – performance and feelings
• contextual – when/where/constraints.

Let’s look at these elements.

Functional element

When you hear the word progress, what do you think of? Likely you’re thinking of what we’ll call functional progress. This is the action part of progress – the “getting fit”, “drilling a hole”, “taking in nourishment” etc.

The functional element of a progress state captures where in the action the seeker is. This allows us later to talk about progress as a verb, moving from a start state, for example “hungry”, to one of “feeling full”. As well as making judgements of how full we are, and how much fuller we might become if we keep attempting progress.

However, progress is more than just functional.

Non-Functional element

Equally important is non-functional progress – for example the: safely, quickly, sense of achievement, enjoyment, not being held up (your ability to attempt your progress whenever you want), etc.

The list of non-functional aspects is potentially endless – I’m sure you can already think of many! But here lies a potential distraction. Only some are really being sought by seekers. So it’s important to identify those and not focus on others you imagine are important. Know your seeker(s).

For a cheat-list of aspects we can usefully re-use a hierarchy produced by Almquist, Senior and Bloch. They looked to uncover various elements of value. Fortunately, most of their elements are insights into various non-functional elements to consider.

Contextual element

Finally, progress as a state includes the contextual element of progress. Think of these as the constraints and conditions of progressing – “no driving license’, ‘in rush hour’ etc. We’ll see when we look at progress as a verb why this is important.

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Understanding and harnessing these elements guides us to discovering more successful innovation. Misunderstanding, or not recognising, non-functional or contextual elements of progress sought will impact success of your progress proposition. Supermarket self-checkouts, are a good example of where a progress helper misunderstood non-functional and contextual progress.

These three elements also allow us to discover better market segmentation – beyond the product feature or demographic approaches usually used today.

Now we know what a progress state is, we’ll move on to why we name several of them.

Progress as a Noun

We’ll soon get to progress as a verb – moving to a more desirable state. Before we get there, let’s glance at progress as a noun.

This is where we name various progress states. In this way, they act as reference/waypoints in a progress attempt, allowing us to describe a seeker’s journey. These named states can be mapped as shown in this diagram.

Naming states has two benefits. Firstly, we can describe a progress attempt. Secondly, we can refer to judgements/measurements made on those attempts.

Tracking progress

The first benefit of naming states is in enabling us to clearly describe a seekers’ progress attempt. We see:

• a seeker’s starting point as progress origin
• their more desirable state as progress sought.
• the state a progress proposition offers to help reach as progress offered

A seeker attempts to progress from their progress origin to progress sought. In the case they engage a progress proposition, then they are attempting to move to the proposition’s progress offered. That may differ from the progress sought – something the seeker needs to accept. We can also note that closing that gap is one fertile ground for hunting innovation.

It is also interesting to note that progress sought and progress origin naturally evolve over time given a seeker’s exposure to progress in your domain, and other domains they are exposed to. For progress helpers, this underpins Drucker’s rallying call of “innovate or die” but also to Christensen’s “innovator’s dilemma“.

Judging progress

Naming states also enables us to refer to various phenomenological judgements seekers (and sometimes helpers) make before, during, and after progress attempts. These are the measures of progress, how much progress:

• has been made by a specific point in time: progress reached
• can be potential made from a specific point in time: progress potential

Such judgements develop over an attempt and are involved in decisions to start, continue, or abandon an attempt. We see those decisions as predominantly made by seekers. Will I, for example, be able to make enough progress? However in some cases the helper also makes decisions not to offer access to their resources. Can this seeker realistically acquire this Italian sports car or am I wasting my resources engaging them?

We should also note that these judgements of progress are related to amounts of emerged value. For that value to be meaningful to a seeker it needs to be recognised. This allows us to reason why for some seekers reaching 80km on a 100km journey is valuable, for others it is useless.

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Having explored progress as a state and as a noun, we’re in a good position to look at progress as a verb.

Progress as a Verb

Now we reach the heart of the progress economy – progress as a verb:

In the progress economy we believe that everybody is trying to make progress with all aspects of their lives. Though for practical reasons we usually consider specific aspects of progress in isolation.

You can see how we pull progress as a state and as a noun together here to describe progress as a verb. A seeker attempts to progress from their current progress state (progress origin) to their more desired state (progress sought). Or to the progress offered state of a progress proposition. They do so through a series of resource integrating progress-making activities.

This means considering the three elements of state we discussed earlier, i.e. we are attempting to make

• functional progress
• non-functional progress
• contextual progress

Here’s what changes, or doesn’t as we attempt progress in each element.

Functional progress

Think of functional progress as learning a language, fixing a car, addressing health issues (visiting a doctor), doing a puzzle, drilling a hole, hanging a picture on a wall, getting nourishment, getting fitter, etc.

For example, getting fit implies going from one state of fitness to a more desired state of fitness (progress sought). These levels of fitness are things we can measure, as are the levels at any point on the journey. As we saw in progress as a noun.

Reaching the fitness level desired means maximum value has emerged for, and been recognised by, the seeker. If engaging a progress proposition, then a seeker reaching progress offered has recognised maximum co-created value.

Non-functional progress

It’s vital not to forget the non-functional elements of progress – the safely, quickly, sense of achievement, not being held up, etc.

Interestingly, some non-functional progress will not change during a progress attempt. “Safely”, for example, is generally a non-functional element you want to remain the same in all states.

Other non-functional progress will improve on the journey. “Sense of achievement” is one such non-functional progress. It should end higher towards the end of an attempt than at the start.

Contextual progress

Finally we have contextual progress. I have two things to lift up about this. First it is equally important to understand a seeker’s context. As Christensen says about his jobs-to-be-done theory (which closely relates to progress):

A job can only be defined – and a successful solution created – relative to the specific context in which it arises

Christensen, C (2016) “Competing against luck”

For example, take the simple functional progress sought of moving 100km. Adding the context of “within 2 hours” limits successful solutions. Additional context of “have no driving licence” further alters successful solutions.

Secondly, by convention, we see contextual progress as remaining the same throughout a progress attempt.

Where a seeker wants to change context, that should be reframed as a distinct functional progress. What do we mean by that? Well, our contextual above of “no driving license”. would become a new functional progress of “gaining a driving license”.

This stability of contextual progress focusses our minds on solutions to specific progress sought without clouding issues.

Equivalent to progress as a verb is progress as a state.

Progress as a State Transition

Lastly, we can see progress as a state transition – which is equivalent to it being a verb.

Here’s why. Progress is a journey from the progress origin state to progress sought (or offered) state. On the way we track numerous progress reached intermediate states. Visually it looks like this:

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So that’s our quick gallop through progress in it’s four guises. Progress as a state gives us the insights into snapshots of progress. We name several of those states to track and judge progress. And progress is made in progess attempts, which we can view equally as a verb or a series of state transitions.

One thing we should cover is the relationship between two theories that share the name “jobs to be done”.

Relating to “Job to be done” theory

If you’re familiar with Ulwick’s or Christensen’s “jobs to be done” theory, you’ll find a common foundation with the progress economy.

Both theories recognise that customers aren’t just purchasing goods and services; they’re seeking to fulfill specific tasks or jobs. In the progress economy, this is reaching progress sought.

And

We define a ”job” as the progress that a person is trying to make in a particular circumstance

Christensen, C. M., Dillon, K., Hall, T., Duncan, D. S. (2016) ”Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice” Harper Business; 1 edition

Both “jobs to be done” theories help us understand what seekers are looking for. And we can use their approaches to identify progress sought.

The progress economy takes us further.

What the progress economy brings

Beyond jobs to be done, we’re concerned with understanding the following:

• a broader view of progress waypoints (origin, sought, offered), judgements (potential and reached) and how value emerges through progress but needs to be recognised by a seeker for it to be meaningful.
• how seekers try to make progress through progress attempts; which are executions of a series of progress-making activities that integrate resources – carriers of capability; however a seeker may lack the resource to progress (a progress hurdle)
• that progress helpers offer supplementary resources – a proposed series of progress-making activities and a progress resource mix – in the form of progress propositions to help seekers make progress. These aim to reduce the lack of resource hurdle but introduce five new hurdles to be minimised
• our world is based on service exchange, often indirect and enabled by service credits. This gives us insights into price and business model innovation.

Relating to value

Let’s take 1970’s disco composer extraordinaire Giorgio Moroder’s advice.

Once you free your mind about a concept of harmony and of music being correct you can do whatever you want

Giorgio Moroder

When we free our minds from the deeply embedded concept that manufacturers embed value and we exchange that for cash, we find that:

• Reaching their progress sought creates maximum possible value for a seeker
• There is no value at their progress origin

Value, then, incrementally emerges as the seeker moves over time between their progress origin and progress sought. There is value-through-progress.

We say that value is a trailing indicator for progress. It’s not value we try and create, it is progress.

If a seeker engages a proposition, then progress is a joint endeavour. Seeker and helper co-create value. We often referred to this as value-in-use. Though the maximum value co-created with a proposition is likely to be different than progress sought.

Interestingly, emerged value is not meaningful to a seeker. They need to recognise it for it to become meaningful. Value recognition is a process similar to revenue recognition, that anyone with a finance background will be familiar with.

Although a seeker’s schedule for recognition may differ from the continuous emergence of value. For example, it could occur:

Relating to innovation

Innovation should enable a seeker to reach as close to their progress sought as possible. Since that is where maximum value has emerged. Failing that, innovation should enable the seeker to make the progress currently possible in a better way. Practically both these require reducing the lack of resource progress hurdle.

Seekers may attempt to improve their progress themselves. They may design and try different progress-making steps. Or utilise existing resources they have access to in novel ways. Perhaps they find new resources in their environment, or acquire them in seemingly unrelated progress attempts. They may even engage progress propositions in a novel manner.

Helpers, likewise, look to innovate their propositions. Aiming to help seekers reach further or make progress currently possible better. Or to close the gap between seekers’ and proposition’s assumed progress origin. They may additionally reduce the five additional progress hurdles that progress propositions introduce.

Finally, we observe that innovation is continuously required. It is driven by the fact that progress sought continuously evolves. It is shaped by seekers’ experiences in attempting progress in various aspects of life, including in other industries, markets, and global perspectives. As well as their observations of others attempting progress. Similarly seekers’ progress origins can shift over time.

For a helper faced with these ever changing progress sought and origins, we naturally come to Drucker’s observation:

Innovate or die

P. Drucker, via “Innovation on the fly”, HBR

Although innovating to chase the evolving progress sought of your most demanding seekers may expose you to be disrupted. That’s part of Christensens “Innovator’s dilemma“.

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