What are resources?

In the Progress Economy, resources are the foundational elements that enable progress. Whether it’s a call centre agent resolving a customer issue, AI helping create some media, sunlight activating a solar panel, or a hammer driving a nail — each involves a purposeful integration of resources to move from one state to a more desired one.

Sometimes integrations are simple between two resources, other times they are more complex multiple resource integrations. Regardless, they are performed to drive forwards progress.

As Vargo et al (2010) observed, human ingenuity continues to generate “countless resources” that shape markets and societies. Just as progress origins and sought evolve over time requiring new resources to meet, so new resources can open up new progress.

De Gregori, in “Resources are not; they become: an institutional theory” traces how what we define as a “resource” is not static. It is continually redefined by how humans learn to apply it to new purposes. This evolution is fundamental to economic and societal progress.

In short: without resources to integrate, no progress can be made.

Let’s begin by exploring how the Progress Economy redefines resources. Not as static assets, but as dynamic enablers of progress. We’ll start by contrasting this with the traditional view, then introduce two critical resource types: operand and operant. Then we’ll examine how both seekers and helpers acquire and mobilise these resources types to drive meaningful outcomes.

The traditional view: tangible vs intangible resources

Historically, strategy and economics have treated resources as either tangible or intangible. This stems from Hunt’s Resource-Advantage Theory, which defines resources as:

the tangible and intangible entities available to an actor

Hunt, S. (1997) “Competing Through Relationships: Grounding Relationship Marketing in Resource-Advantage Theory”

In this framing, resources include goods and infrastructure as well as intangibles like expertise, brand equity, and relationships.

However, this view, often gets interpreted as mainly goods. This risks narrowing our thinking. It frames resources primarily in terms of what something is, rather than in terms of how they enable progress. It drags us into, unhelpful and incorrect, debates about how tangibles (goods) are better than intangibles (services (plural)).

The progress economy view: resources as carriers of capability

In the Progress Economy, we reframe how we look at resources. Instead of asking what something is – tangible or intangible – we ask what it enables. The emphasis shifts from form to function. What matters is not the asset itself, but the role it plays in shaping progress.

This is powerfully articulated by Peters et al. (2014), who argue:

…no tangible or intangible item represents a resource in its own right; rather a resource is a “property of things…”. In this sense, a resource is a carrier of capabilities

Peters L.D., Löbler, H., Brodie R. and Briedbach, C. (2014) “Theorizing about resource integration though S-D Logic”

This view allows us to think of resources not as static assets, but as dynamic enablers of progress

The capabilities that resources carry come in many forms, more common ones are:

• skills and knowledge
• physical attributes like strength
• organisational traits such as culture
• abstract entities like availability
• and many others.

Resources then carry these capabilities.

For example, a seeker carries skills and knowledge and strength; wind carries power; and time carries availability.

There is a consequential impact of this way of thinking, that is more obvious in the progress economy than in our traditional goods-based view. We can swap resources carrying the same capability. For example, we could swap out a goods for an employee (servitisation). Or an employee for a system (applying generative AI, for example). This is something we’ll discuss more when looking at the progress resource mix.

Common resources in the progress economy are: seekers, helpers, progress propositions, goods, locations. Some resources are beyond human control, such as time and weather (as discussed in Vargo, Lush and Akaka’s “Advancing service science with service-dominant logic“).

We embrace this view in the Progress Economy where we will define:

resource: a carrier of capability that can be integrated in one or more progress-making activities.

There is a little issue, though…

The resource-capability confusion

n both academic literature and everyday business language, the terms resource and capability are often used interchangeably.

Here’s how the confusion typically shows up:

• Skills – these are capabilities, yet we frequently refer to them as “resources”. In reality, skills are carried by humans, codified into systems, or embedded within goods.
• Strength – this capability is carried by a person, an animal, a robot, or a machine (amongst others). Still, we often label it a “resource”.
• Wind – commonly referred to as a “natural resource” – though we often forget to talk about the capabilities it carries, i.e. power.

These linguistic short-cuts are just something we need to live with in this day and age; but be aware of them!

The bottom line is: Capabilities enable progress. Resources carry capabilities. Integration creates progress (value).

How resources help make progress

In the Progress Economy, resources drive outcomes through integration. Progress doesn’t happen in isolation; it depends on the right mix of resources, used in the right way, at the right time.

We’ll distinguish between two types: operand resources, which need to be acted upon (like a machine or a product), and operant resources, which act on others (such as people, systems, or AI). Operant resources tend to be more adaptive and are often the source of strategic advantage – though not always the most efficient or scalable option.

Resource integration: how progress is made and value emerges

Progress is made through resource integration. This is the fundamental basis of value (co-) creation in the progress economy. Leading to the concepts of value-through-progress and value-in-use.

We integrate 2 or more resources during progress-makings steps of progress attempts.

Naturally, at least one resource in any integration needs to be operant – acting on the other resources. It comes from either the seeker (often the seeker themselves) or the helper (a resource from their progress resource mix).

Operant and Operand resources

Whilst we don’t talk about tangible or intangible resources, In the progress economy we classify resources by how they help make progress. They are either operant or operand resources.

These definitions are adapted for the Progress Economy from Constantin & Lusch’s foundational work in “Understanding Resource Management: How to Deploy Your People, Products and Processes for Maximum Productivity“ (1994).

Let’s ground this with an example. In the progress attempt “John drives the car to get to the office”:

• John is an operant resource, integrating his knowledge and skills of driving with the car resource
• The car is an operand resource; it must be driven in order to contribute to progress

A resource’s classification isn’t fixed — it depends on the capability in question. Consider the natural resource of water:

• when used to drive a turbine, water is an operand resource – its force acts upon the turbine to create progress (energy).
• but when used to quench thirst, it is an operant resource – it must be consumed (acted upon) for progress to occur.

Allocative control: who Decides When a Resource is Used?

A defining characteristic of most resources is allocative control—the ability and discretion to decide when a resource is put to work.

allocative control (of resource) – the ability and freedom to control when a resource is used

This concept becomes especially important when considering how resources are shared or transferred. Allocative control can be temporarily delegated to another party. Shifting not ownership, but control over deployment.

This distinction helps us clarify the difference between goods and physical resources within a helper’s resource mix. Physical resources are, in effect, goods whose allocative control has been temporarily handed over to the progress seeker.

Strategic Benefit: why Better Resources Mean Better Business

The greater their ability resource(s) have to help someone achieve their progress sought, the more competitive advantage they confer.

But “better” needs unpacking. To truly understand strategic benefit, we must consider how a resource contributes across all three aspects of progress:

• Functional – does it get the job done?
• Non-functional – does it do so in a preferred, efficient, or emotionally resonant way?
• Contextual – is it suitable given the user’s specific environment, constraints, and preferences?

Let’s take a simple example: moving 100 km from A to B. Functionally, the job could be done using many resources: walking shoes, a bicycle, a car (owned or hired), train, plane, or even a Zoom call. But add non-functional or contextual aspects, like a desire for athletic achievement, the need to work en route, or a preference for scenic discovery, and suddenly some resources are more advantageous than others.

If you want a sense of achievement, cycling might win. If you need to prep for a board meeting en route, a train or taxi becomes optimal. Want flexibility and control? Using a car may be ideal. And if you don’t own one, you could hire one.

For progress helpers, the supplementary resource to offer becomes competitive strategy. Hunt’s Resource-Advantage Theory tells us that firms win by offering superior resources. Weaker players must improve—by managing existing resources better, acquiring new ones, or innovating around how they’re used. (Hunt, S. (1997) “Competing Through Relationships: Grounding Relationship Marketing in Resource-Advantage Theory”).

Service-Dominant Logic (Vargo & Lusch) strengthens this: it positions operant resources – those that act on others – as the true source of strategic benefit. Unlike passive goods, operant resources adapt, respond, and interact. A handyman offers advice and judgement; a power drill does not.

We extend this thinking in the Progress Economy. But with a key nuance. While operant resources offer strategic value, they also come with trade-offs. They may introduce higher costs or push a solution toward the relieving end of the proposition continuum, when a customer may actually be looking for enabling support instead. We say:

• if a seeker wants a relieving proposition (e.g. “just do it for me”), then operant resources are strategic.
• if a seeker wants an enabling proposition (e.g. “help me do it myself”), then operand resources take on that role.

We can capture this more generically. A resource is a strategic benefit if it does one or more of the following:

• help make current progress potential in a better way
• help make better progress towards individual seeker’s progress sought
• reduce one or more of the 6 progress hurdles

And that just happens to be part of the progress economy’s definition of innovation.

Let’s look at both types or resources in more detail, starting with operant resources.

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