…that offer improved progress potential through combination of:
An innovation must result in a beneficial outcome for the seeker. Since we take a progress-first view of the world, that must mean enabling better progress. That is, proposing an offering a Seeker can judge has improved progress potential.
From this starting point we can tease out four innovation outcomes:
| innovation outcome | description |
|---|---|
| Increasing progress possible today (towards progress sought) | offering to get the Seeker closer to their progress sought from nearer their current progress origin. ➠ Zoom enabled remote teams to work together as if co-located, not just improving conference calls but redefining what was possible and making it simple to start |
| making today’s progress better | for example, reducing friction, improving reliability, or simplifying complexity in how progress is currently made. ➠ Uber made the existing process of hailing a taxi faster, more transparent, and more reliable. |
| lowering one or more of the six progress hurdles | hurdles slow down, or prevent, Seekers from reaching their progress sought, lowering them is very helpful. These progress hurdles are: (lack of capability, lack of confidence, adoptability, resistance, inequitable exchange, misalignment on continuum. ➠ Stripe lowered the cost of online payments (through removing the technical and contractual hurdles) , allowing businesses of any size to start taking payments in hours instead of weeks |
| accelerating potential for well-being recognition frequency | helping Seekers feel they can recognise emerged well-being earlier and with greater frequency. (emerged well-being is a progress comparison of progress reached and progress sought. It needs to be recognised for it to have meaning a Seeker. This is similar to revenue recognition in accounting). ➠ Agile approaches do this by guiding seekers to prioritise and retrospect in smaller “sprints” rather than having to wait until the end. |
These outcomes we can visualise on a progress diagram, which shows them in the form of progress levers:
We can reduce one or more of the progress hurdles, as seen in brown on the right of the diagram. Or we can accelerate well-being recognition (in blue at the bottom). The green arrow shows us moving progress potential closer to progress sought. Whereas the yellow arrow shows us making today’s progress in a better way (we’ll shortly see this is a shortcut of the green arrow). Finally, the progress.economy tells us that the progress origin is also important in enabling progress. So aligning a proposition’s origin with the Seeker is beneficial.
Before we explore these four outcomes in detail, two cautions are worth noting.
First, these outcomes are often interdependent. If we, for example, enable more progress we typically need to offer more capability, an action that likely increases the inequitable exchange progress hurdle (in simple terms, price). Similarly, reducing one progress hurdle, may raise another. Everything needs to be considered as a whole.
Second, we must relentlessly focus on understanding the Seeker’s progress sought and their current origin. It is entirely possible to create ineffective propositions in the progress economy if we ignore this (or are too slow in delivering and the progress journey has moved on – see ”innovate or die”. Or we can miss/loose Seekers if misunderstand their progress sought/origins.
Right, it’s time to dive into the first innovation outcome.
1. Increasing progress possible towards progress sought
An outcome of innovation is a progress proposition that enables a Seeker to get closer to their progress sought than is currently possible
Our first innovation outcome is the one that most likely springs first to mind – increasing the progress possible towards progress sought. Where this could involve any combination of a progress state’s three dimensions (functional, non-functional and contextual).
This outcome may also address progress sought that is currently unmet or poorly met.
However, equally important as progress sought – but often not addressed – is aligning progress origin. If your proposition’s origin is too far to the right of the Seeker (ie the offered capabilities are insufficient), the on-ramp may be too high,
Or your proposition’s origin may be too far to the left of the Seeker’s – in which. case you are offering too much capability. A Seeker might get frustrated by that, particularly if your progress-making activities mandate their use. You’re adding no progress help (and therefore no increase in well-being – in fact, you may be destroying well-being).
| progress lever | overview |
|---|---|
| extending progress offered towards progress sought | How can you help your Seeker get closer to their progress sought than they currently can? ➠ The use of drones by Ukraine has radically altered defensive (and offensive) warfare |
| segmentation based on three dimensions of progress state | Not all Seekers need the same help (supplementary capability), are you clear who you want to help? ➠ Segmentation on functional, non-functional and contextual progress is powerful yo get understanding; |
| targeting an unmet/poorly met segment | Are there segments (based on progress sought/origin) that are either unmet or poorly met – most likely, yes; they are still looking for help to make progress ➠ Blue Ocean Strategy, again using elements of the progress state dimensions, is a way of identifying unmet opportunities |
| aligning your proposition’s progress origin | How can you help your Seeker start making progress? Or remove unnecessary, to them, capability? ➠ Canva offer to help Seekers with no design experience create material (unlike, say, Adobe that caters to experienced designers) |
There are a number of additional progress levers that come from thinking through the above, including:
| progress lever | overview |
|---|---|
| chaining propositions on behalf of a Seeker | Can you may act as a front to other propositions that need chaining together to help a Seeker make best progress? ➠ Online retailers often do this, seamlessly linking payment and delivery service offerings towards the buyer |
| piggy-backing on existing propositions (dual use / taking advantage) | Can you use your existing proposition to help enable different progress? ➠ Swedish Busgoods use their scheduled bus service to additionally deliver goods to collection points on the bus route in the sparser populated region of Sweden |
| being ahead of ”innovate or die” | Seeker’s progress sought, and origin, constantly evolve due to experiences and capabilities they gain through all the progress attempts they are involved with. ➠ All Helpers needy to address this fact. |
| unbundling propositions to offer choice | ➠ Online retailers may do this – offering choices of payment and delivery methods to Seekers |
| unbundling propositions to enable progress | ➠ Amazon do this with their cloud services; originally unbundling their commerce platform into cloud services |
2: making Today’s progress better
An outcome of innovation is a progress proposition that enables a Seeker to make their current possible progress in a better way
The dual of enabling better progress than possible today is to enable today’s progress in a better way.
Now this is really a cognitive shortcut directly related to the previous outcome. Making today’s progress better usually means improving non-functional progress offered, or aligning closer to contextual progress of a progress journey. So it is improving progress towards progress sought on those dimensions. But it is a useful conceit to look at as its own innovattion outcome.
Uber is a larger-scale example. They didn’t change the functional progress offered – “get from A to B” – but they dramatically improved non-functional progress. By shifting the resource mix from call-center (or just one person answering a phone call) employees to a mobile app, they made the progress journey faster, more transparent, and more reliable. Features such as real-time vehicle tracking and two-way ratings drove behavioral change on both sides of the platform, leading to better overall experiences.
B2B examples are equally powerful here. Snowflake, for instance, didn’t just store data (a progress offered that is the same as a traditional data warehouse); they simplified setup, scaled infrastructure automatically, and charged on actual usage – making today’s progress easier and more cost-aligned.
| progress lever | discussion |
|---|---|
| improve non-functional progress towards that sought | Make thinks quicker, faster, simpler if that is what the Seeker is looking for. Beware, some Seekers are looking for the challenge, or to learn skills and competences; do you want to cater to them? |
| improve contextual progress towards that sought | I mentioned already some gyms hold Peloton classes, shifting the contextual progress sought from “at home/own equipment” to “physically with others/don’t own equipment”. The functional progress sought dimension does not change. |
A consequential progress level is that of disruptive innovation
| progress lever | discussion |
|---|---|
| disruptive innovation | Using new technology to address the progress sought of less demanding Seekers that have been left behind by other Helpers (and then improve the progress offered to increasingly target mainstream progress sought) |
3: Lowering progress hurdles
An outcome of innovation is a progress proposition that lowers one or more of the 6 progress hurdles
Another powerful innovation outcome is reducing one or more of the six progress hurdles.
These hurdles form part of a Seekers judgement of progress potential (and therefore part of their interpretation of increase in well-being). The higher they judge them, the lower their judgement of progress potential. If we can lower the perception of these hurdle heighs, we increase attracting the Seeker to engage.
| progress lever | discussion |
|---|---|
| reduce lack of capability | this is the general purpose of any proposition; can you reduce that lack further? |
| increase adoptability | this hurdle relates to Rogers’ classic adoptability factors (compatibility etc); can you increase those and therefore reduce this hurdle? ➠ the classic example here is the QWERTY nature of your keyboard. Introduced to slow down typists on typewriters and reduce mechanical jams, it has no need on computers, but we have qwerty keyboards for familiarity. Even on digital mobile touch screens, QWERTY persists, now to provide compatibility with computers, |
| reduce resistance | some innovations are resisted on a sliding scale for reasons identified in this hurdle; can you minimise this resistance? ➠ Google failed with this with their Google Glass v1; adopters didn’t give much resistance, but the general public did, giving rise to the name “glassholes” for users. |
| reduce lack of confidence | how can you increase the confidence of the Seeker in your proposition/you? Are their branding aspects your can extend from other propositions you have? ➠ Apple do this when moving inti new categories |
| reduce continuum misalignment | where is the Seeker positioned on the enabling-relieving progress continuum; and can you innovate to move your proposition’s position closer? ➠ the “shift to the service economy” is an example; here we see Seekers moving towards the relieving end of the continuum and propositions need to keep up. But be aware, Seekers do go the other way when they want to gain skills, or do things themselves. |
| reduce inequitable exchange | in essence this is met by business model innovation; rather than look for a one time exchange of maximum service credits (eg money), can that be spread over time (subscription, credit, buy-now-pay-later, etc) or other sources for those credits (subsidised, ad-based, collect data for sale, etc) ➠ Spotify shifted business model of music industry from single purchase for dedicated context to subscription based payments for access to much wider content, |
There are, though, links between these hurdles, where lowering one can higher another.
4: Accelerating potential for well-being recognition frequency
An outcome of innovation is accelerating the potential for well-being recognition frequency
The final innovation outcome we consider is accelerating a Seeker’s recognition of emerged well-being.
I’ve already mentioned that as a Seeker progresses towards their progress sought their well-being increases. However, that increase may or may not be meaningful to them, at that point in time. They need to recognise the increase for it to be meaningful – it’s just like revenue recognition in accounting (although not backed by international accounting standards).
If we can offer the Seeker the ability to recognise emerged well-being quicker, that can be beneficial to them. Until a Seeker feels comfortable recognising emerged well-being, they may lose energy, doubt the journey, and abandon the attempt entirely or switch to another proposition.
| progress lever | discussion |
|---|---|
| accelerating a Seeker’s well-being recognition frequency | how can you help a Seeker recognise that current emerged well-being is meaningful to them? ➠ shifting progress-making activities towards Agile approaches is one way; others are introducing steps to follow up on progress. |
You can see this in how leading SaaS providers design onboarding. Rather than expecting customers to master the entire platform before recognising well-being increases, they deliberately create early “aha moments.” For example, project management software firms like Asana or Monday.com ensure new users experience success within minutes – by setting up their first task, inviting a colleague, or automating a simple workflow. Each early win is a recognition of a well-being increase, anchoring the Seeker’s belief that the platform will continue to support their larger progress sought.
Similarly, Industrial equipment manufacturers now embed sensors and digital dashboards to provide real-time feedback on performance improvements or cost savings. Instead of waiting for a quarterly report to see ROI, customers can see reduced downtime or energy usage immediately. In consulting, firms that share quick wins – for instance, highlighting early operational savings in a transformation project – give clients confidence that the larger initiative will deliver.
These “early recognition” and “aha” moments strengthens trust, reduces abandonment, and increases appetite for additional collaboration.
Let’s progress together through discussion…