What we’re thinking
Progress Helpers offer supplementary capabilities that offer the potential to enable Seekers to make better progress than the Seeker can on their own.
They do so through offering progress propositions – a series of proposed progress-making steps and a proposition specific resource mix. Execution of those progress-making steps is performed by some agreed combination of the Seeker and Helper, leading to a continuum of enabling-relieving propositions. These propositions do not capture value, they have only the potential to improve well-being.
Why this matters
Helpers offer propositions because they have progress they seek that they lack capabilities to make, and so they wish to exchange service with others. Often this exchange is indirect using service-credits (money being a dominant form).
Whilst the Seeker is predominant judger of progress/improvement in well-being, a Helper may make similar progress judgements from their perspective, choosing to withdraw access to their capabilities if they see low potential to complete a service exchange.
Progress HelperS
Progress helpers are the heros in The Progress Economy.
They’ve overcome the lack of resource hurdle for a specific progress attempt – and choose to offer those hard-won new resources (skills, knowledge, physical (like strength) or abstract (like time) capabilities), to others as progress propositions,
They may have overcome that hurdle through:
- personal trial and error as a seeker
- deliberate efforts to improve progress
- training (knowledge/skill) transfer from other helper
Who are these Progress Helpers? They can be an individual, or an organisation, offering a progress proposition to help a seeker reach a state of progress offered from an assumed progress origin.
A helper may also be the facade to an ecosystem of helpers. Consider a modern retail organisation. It often acts as a facade to a payment, warehousing, and distribution/delivery helpers. Here the organisation acts as a ‘value network architect’ (Lusch et al., 2010: Service, Value Networks and Learning) or a value network’s ‘prime integrator’ (Lusch et al. (2007)). Occasionally, a seeker might co-ordinate an ecosystem of helpers themselves; or perhaps the prime integrator unbundles
If we open up an organisation we find it acts as a facade to a number of internal helpers (and seekers).
The Seeker primarily judges whether a proposition’s progress offered and progress origin align with their progress sought and origin, whether the progress potential feels achievable, and if progress reached meets expectations (all seen as value).
However, in some cases, the Helper may also judge progress potential and reached with a Seeker to see if they are a good match to their proposition – and may decline, or withdraw, use of their supplementary resources.
Finally, when progress is hindered by either a seeker or helper, we might be observing value destruction.
Dynamics of the progress economy
What drives The Progress Economy? We’re now in a position to understand this.
It’s the imbalance of resource ownership: no actor possesses all the resources needed to pursue the totality of their progress sought. This creates an opportunity for exchange of help in making progress – and we call this service exchange.
Here, “service” is (singular) – the act of helping making progress – and not to be confused with services (plural). The later being how our traditional world sees services in relation to goods.
Exchanges may be direct, I help you and you help me. More often they are indirect, typically transitive, mediated and lubricated with service credits (of which money has been a successful implementation). Service credits indicate the effort expected in exchange for providing a service; this may be a one-time or multi-time exchange.
Service credits and the notion of equitable exchange underpin business model innovation (Clauß, T, Laudien, S & Daxböck, B. (2014). Service-dominant logic and the business model concept: Toward a conceptual integration.)
The purpose of a progress helper
Understanding the dynamics of the progress economy as service exchange enables us to understand the simple purpose of a progress helper. Peter Drucker famously said:
the purpose of a business is to create a customer – as such it has two, and only two, functions: innovation and marketing.
Drucker, P. F. (1954) “The Practice of Management”
We can interpret this in the progress economy terminology.
the purpose of a Progress Helper is to attract direct or indirect equitable service exchanges in pursuit of their own progress sought – as such a progress helper has two, and only two, functions:
- marketing – continuously discovering seekers’ evolving progress sought and origins
- innovating – continuously improving progress offered and progress origin to close that gap [and minimise six progress hurdles]
For us, “customers” already exist—everyone is a Seeker and a portion of them lack the resources needed to make the progress they’re pursuing. The role of a Progress Helper, then, is to attract those Seekers—or more actionably, to attract direct or indirect equitable service exchanges. These exchanges enable the Helper to pursue their own progress sought.
For a Seeker to engage, the Helper’s proposition must be more compelling than going it alone. That means the Helper must continuously:
- Understand the Seeker’s origins, progress sought, and how those evolve over time—this is marketing.
- Evolve the proposition to help Seekers achieve better outcomes, or make existing progress easier—this is innovation.
Let’s progress together through discussion…