The real question for innovators is not “how do we add value?” but “how do we enable better progress?”. Enable what seekers truly want: improved well-being – by enabling better progress (functional, non-functional, contextual) with lower progress hurdles and quicker well-being recognition.
What we’re thinking
We’ve uncovered that chasing value is the root of our innovation problem and that solving it comes from a mind shift to increasing well-being through enabling better progress. Taking a progress-forward view reveals four clear, actionable, innovation outcomes, wrapped in an directive definition.
innovation: creating and executing new – to the individual, organisation, market, industry, world – progress propositions that offer improved progress potential through some combination of:
- increasing possible progress
- improving today’s progress
- lowering one or more of the six progress hurdles
- accelerating potential for well-being recognition frequency
whilst maintaining, or improving, the survivability of the innovator and/or ecosystem
Be gone chasing ill-defined ”added value”, so long mismatched expectations, and farewell innovation theatre.
Say hello to creating and executing new – to the individual, firm, market, industry, world – progress proposition(s), that offer some combination of better progress, lowered hurdles, and accelerated frequency of well-being recognition:
Why this matters
Our progress-first definition of innovation does three things that traditional approaches struggle to do. It:
- resonates with what customers (and, in general, all actors) want – an increase in well-being
- operationalises the act of innovation – progress gives us the language, progress levers give us the tools
- provides valuable insights into decision making – well-being is judged via comparisons of progress
Now we can design for better progress, maximising well-being improvement, rather than depend on chance. We turn Christensen’s idea of “competing against luck” into something innovators and managers can actually do.
The real question for innovators becomes simple, but profound: “how do we enable Seekers to make better progress?”
Defining Innovation in a progress-forward world
When we shift our focus from chasing value to enabling progress and improving well-being, innovation becomes clearer, more grounded, and far more actionable.
At its core, innovation improves well-being by enabling better progress.
Innovation improves well-being by enabling better progress
What does progress mean? In short, it is the Progress Seeker moving over time from their current progress origin to their progress sought (both of these are progress states with three dimensions: functional, non-functional, and contextual).
Enabling “better progress” can take several forms. When we progress as the operating model for economic activity, four broad innovation outcomes emerge:
- increasing the progress that is possible – enabling the Seeker to get closer to their more desired state of progress sought
- making today’s progress better – enabling the Seeker to get closer to their non-functional or contextual dimensions of progress (really a subset of the previous outcome)
- lowering one or more of the six progress hurdles – reducing aspects that may cause a Seeker to abandon, or not start, a progress attempt (lack of capability, adoptability, resistance, misalignment on continuum, lack of confidence, inequitable exchange)
- accelerating well-being recognition – emerged well-being increase needs to be recognised for it to be meaningful to the progress seeker
Combining these outcomes with two additional conditions, we arrive at the progress economy’s definition of innovation. First, innovation produces new progress propositions – they are offers to help. Second, those propositions must not undermine the well-being of the Helper or the ecosystem/service system delivering them.
Put together:
innovation: creating and executing new – to the individual, organisation, market, industry, world – progress propositions that offer improved progress potential through some combination of:
- increasing possible progress
- making today’s progress better
- lowering one or more of the six progress hurdles
- accelerating potential for well-being recognition frequency
whilst maintaining, or improving, the survivability of the innovator and/or ecosystem
Before unpacking this definition in detail, I want to highlight a key implication: progress levers.
Introducing progress levers
The four outcomes above are not just results of innovation – they are high-level progress levers. They represent the aspects of the progress economy where we can focus our creative energy to most reliably improves innovation and sales performance.
As we explore progress as an operating model, many more levers become visible. We’ll find levers such updating the offered resource mix, moving along the enabling-relieving continuum by altering who performs the progress-making activities, and more.
Together, progress levers and the wider operating model move innovation away from a game of luck and toward a systematic discipline.
Right, let’s expand the components of our exciting innovation definition, starting with the output of innovation is the creation and execution of progress propositions; then we’ll look at what it means for them to be new, what the four outcomes mean, and why survivability is important.
Let’s progress together through discussion…