The Progress Economy

Which progress levers are you applying to turn innovation (and sales) from a gamble into repeatable creative success?

Creating from here downwards

Operationalising innovation

What Christensen called a “job to be done”, as part of his “competing against luck” view, is captured precisely by progress thinking. A Progress Seeker is trying to move from their current state – progress origin – to a more desirable state – their progress sought.

We go further to see that Seekers attempt to make progress through a series of progress-making activities: the application of capabilities via resource integration. Inevitably, they lack some of the capabilities required. This shortfall creates a capability gap—a progress hurdle they may or may not try to overcome on their own. More often, they turn to a progress proposition to help them make better progress than they could achieve unaided.

From this perspective, innovation becomes sharply defined: it is the creation, and execution, of propositions that help make better progress.

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 value recognition frequency

whilst maintaining, or improving, the survivability of the innovator and/or ecosystem

This definition is more actionable than traditional ones that focus on creating, adding, or redistributing value. Crucially, it provides a clear path to operationalisation. Embedded within it are concrete progress levers we can pull to make innovation (and sales) more systematic and more successful.

These levers become readily visible when we view our innovation definition on a progress diagram as above.

Applying these levers is how we begin to truly compete against luck.

Progress Levers

By progress levers I mean aspects of the progress economy we can identify and systematically pull on to guide our application of creativity to result in a Seeker making better progress than before.

are the aspects of the progress economy where focused intervention has the greatest impact. They are the points at which we can deliberately concentrate progress-improving activity to shift sales and innovation away from luck and toward systematic, repeatable success.

progress levers: aspects of the progress economy where we can best focus our progress improving activities to move sales/innovation from luck to be systematic and successful

They can be used for guiding sales – hence the name progress rather than innovation levers.

The progress economy reveals a much richer suite of levers than the “adding additional value” of our traditional world.

High-level levers

Rolling directly out of our innovation definition are four levers that reflect the four innovation outcomes.

• improving how today’s progress is made
• improving beyond today’s progress (in the direction of progress sought)
• reducing one or more of the 6 progress hurdles
• accelerating value recognition

The first two readily expand into a number of more detailed levers

Detailed Levers

Beneath those high-level levers sit more detailed operational levers:

• Aligning proposition progress origins with Seekers’
• Updating the proposed-progress making activities
• Moving those progress making activities to be guided/mandated in system flows; or freeing them up
• Sliding along the progress proposition continuum – to where your Seekers are sitting on the continuum in terms of looking to be enabled/relieved
• Improving an aspect of the current progress resource mix
• Reconfiguring the progress resource mix
• more…

We can even find common innovation approaches in the progress levers.

Concepts explained by progress levers

Ever wondered why Drucker urges us “innovate or die” or what are the mechanics behind disruptive innovation or blue ocean strategy? We get insights into them through various progress levers.

• Recognising Seekers’ progress sought and progress origins evolve over time – due to experience from all the progress attempts they are making and observing – leads us to Drucker’s rallying call of “innovate or die”
• Segmenting by progress (sought and/or origin) is more powerful compared to traditional demographic segmentation
• Disruptive innovation, as defined by Christensen, is found in the mechanics of segmenting by progress and the inevitable chase of improving progress sought
• Blue Ocean strategy searches for uncontested combinations of functional, non-functional and contextual progress sought
• more…

So the question stands: which progress levers are you choosing to systematically, and successfully, innovate (or drive better sales)?

Welcome to the lever gallery

Here then is a gallery of the progress levers that are currently defined!

Following is not yet complete, and articles may also be incomplete. [Future note: how can navigation be better performed?]

Wrapping up

Progress levers are the operational tools of innovation. They can be used to guide creativity to results that matter to progress seekers: better progress to their progress sought, with lower progress hurdles, and faster value recognition.

text to move elsewhere

Somme Servitisation replaces goods with physical resources where ownership transfer does not occur, as Rolls-Royce did with “power by the hour”. Digitisation lowers employee intensity while increasing systems – as Slack did when replacing fragmented communication tools with a unified platform. Artificial intelligence (AI) encapsulates knowledge and skills that Seekers augment themselves with, such as Salesforce’s Einstein AI recommending sales actions. Digital twins combine systems and interpretation resources to create real-time operational insight, as GE Digital does for industrial equipment. Shifting online (bricks to clicks) reduces physical locations, increasing scalability – as Shopify did for small businesses seeking to launch e-commerce storefronts.∑

Innovation also occurs at the ecosystem level. Amazon, recognising that Seekers’ definition of progress sought was shifting toward “I want my package tomorrow” moved to build its own last-mile delivery network, reducing dependency on third parties and controlling more of the progress journey. Apple went further, creating a tightly integrated ecosystem of hardware, software, and services to align with Seekers’ progress sought of “a seamless digital life” and “effortless continuity across devices”.

Other retailers reflect a different kind of progress sought: “I want to choose how the last mile delivery occurs.” In markets such as Scandinavia or Germany, Seekers often want flexibility: delivery to the home, an ecological “green” option, pick-up at a staffed parcel agent, or retrieval from a digitally unlocked locker box. Innovators have responded by unbundling last-mile delivery into configurable choices at checkout, letting Seekers align logistics with their own progress priorities — convenience, sustainability, cost, or control.

ending text

Additionally, altering the service mix leads to the concept behind many of today’s innovative moves. Including:

• servitisation typically replaces goods in the mix with physical resources as well as adding systems
• digitisation typically lowers employees whilst increases system elements in the mix
• artificial intelligence and machine learning are “simply” systems encapsulating knowledge/skills that a seeker can integrate with
• digital twins requires adding systems to the mix and often employees to interpret the twin’s info for the seeker
• shifting online reduces physical resources (buildings etc) and increases systems in the mix

Altering the progress making activities

combining progress propositions (even from other Helpers)

Shifting along the progress continuum

Challenge if progress sought is eno

ing the progress resource mix

Progress journeys – there are clear journeys where progress-making steps are known and clear; there are exploratory journeys made up of a set of clear journeys (ER room, for example); there are exploratory journeys where progress-making steps are unknown . There are journeys that might block other journeys (like being in ER…where am I in the progress, what can they offer to minimise blocking other journeys, eg offering WiFi was good)

Extending progress offered

The most natural way of extending progress possible is to innovate existing progress offered towards the Seekers’ progress sought.

Take Tesla. Their innovation journey is fundamentally about meeting Seekers’ progress sought of “zero-emission mobility” within the context of “familiar usage patterns”. Early electric vehicles, of this cycle, had limited range, which meant progress on “familiar usage patterns” was largely unmet.

Tesla’s introduction of a supercharging network, along with faster charging technologies, slowly extended usable range and helped Seekers get closer to the contextual progress they are seeking. Subsequent innovations in battery capacity, software-based route planning, charging convenience, etc, further closes the gap between Tesla’s progress offered and Seekers’ progress sought.

There is a tendency to think in terms of functional progress sought in this approach. That is not necessary, as improving non-functional and contextual progress offered is also valid (though often thought of as our 2nd category – making today’s progress better).

Aligning progress origins

But Seeker’s also struggle to reach their progress sought if a proposition’s origin is too far away from their own currentorigin. In other words, if the on-ramp to the journey is too far away.

Canva provides a clear example of reducing the gap between the progress origin of the Seeker and the proposition. They innovated to align their progress origin with design novices, offering professional-quality outputs through a radically simplified interface. This allowed anyone – from a small business owner to a social media manager – to create high-quality graphics without hiring a designer or learning advanced tools like Photoshop. Their target Seeker is not a design professional, who may find the tooling too basic or too constraining. These Seekers are probably more suited to the likes of Photoshop.

On the other hand, your innovation may be providing too many capabilities (often surfacing as a higher inequitable exchange progress hurdle). Are you underestimating your Seeker’s existing capabilities and trying to help them do things that are already easy to them?

From both these perspectives we get another insight (and lever): Seekers should be segmented based on progress origin and/or progress sought (ra ther than the common demographics approach),

Chaining propositions

Achieving the above can come from offering to chain propositions together (yours and others).

We see this often in the online B2C retail market. Here the Seeker’s progress sought is broadly to discover a goods they desire (to help them in some other progress sought) and have it at as quickly as possible in their hands.

A Helper observing the full journey will realise this requires a place to discover (an online store), logistics (sourcing, warehousing, delivery), and payment propositions.

Very few Helpers provide all as their own solution. Many use an external payment processor, and 3rd party delivery. However, they work hard to link those propositions together, buying or allying with 3rd parties, in a seamless way for the progress Seeker. Imagne buying something online and then having to organise your own collection and delivery!

Amazon famously shifted this model by making its own delivery capability, allowing tighter control over speed, reliability, and customer experience – better aligning with Seekers’ non-functional progress sought of “fast, predictable delivery.”. Are there parts of your Seekers’ progress journey that you better control?

This is a modern expression of Williamson’s transaction cost economics: make, buy, or ally. Still driven primarily by the notion of avoiding hold-ups, although now those hold-ups are related to hindering Seeker’s progress rather than production economics/hold-ups.

This same bundling dynamics is visible in B2B markets. Enterprise SaaS providers have increasingly bundled once-separate capabilities into a single progress proposition. For instance, Slack’s integration with Zoom and Google Drive reduces friction for teams by embedding collaboration, meetings, and file sharing in one place – aligning progress offered with teams that want to stay in-flow without switching tools.

In manufacturing and industrial settings, this principle is visible in how capital equipment providers now think about aligning progress.

• Bundling capabilities: Siemens, GE, and other OEMs now bundle predictive maintenance and remote monitoring into their industrial equipment offerings. This aligns with Seekers’ progress sought of “maximising uptime” and “reducing unplanned downtime.” It also helps close the progress origin gap for customers who lack internal analytics capabilities.
• Ecosystem alignment: Mining and construction equipment makers like Caterpillar and Komatsu increasingly integrate with telematics providers, data platforms, and even third-party service networks to help Seekers make progress toward safety, productivity, and sustainability goals.

Even logistics providers are innovating at the level of progress alignment. Maersk’s “integrator” strategy bundles port-to-port shipping, customs clearance, warehousing, and inland transport into a single proposition. This helps shippers whose progress origin was fragmented – dealing with multiple vendors – by reducing complexity and aligning with the progress sought of “visibility and reliability across the whole supply chain”.

Unbundling progress

In contrast, other retailers have taken the opposite approach and unbundled delivery. They allow Seekers to choose at checkout (buy) who they want to handle last-mile delivery. In Sweden, for example, consumers can select between legacy Post Office services (often delivering to a pickup agent), self-collect automated lockers, or eco-delivery via bicycle – reflecting progress sought such as “I want delivered to my door” or “I want to pick up at a convenient location on my time wish” or “I want a more sustainable option.”

Other companies are unbundling their own propositions to give enterprise customers more control. AWS, Azure, and GCP have progressively decomposed monolithic offerings into microservices, letting Seekers compose infrastructure to their exact needs – offering “just enough” capabilities and aligning more precisely to their progress sought and origins. This helps Seekers avoid overbuying capacity they cannot yet use, or underbuying and creating capability gaps.

Piggy-backing on propositions

Innovation here can also emerge in surprising places. In northern Sweden, buses have long transported goods between remote towns as a way to utilize existing transport capacity. ICA, a major Swedish supermarket chain, has taken this further with ICA Paket — using spare capacity in its supply chain to transport parcels from select retailers to ICA stores for pickup. This not only improves asset utilisation for ICA but also helps Seekers make progress by offering them a convenient, trusted location for parcel collection as part of their normal shopping routines.

Targeting a niche

Managing ”innovate or die”

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These examples show that aligning progress origin/offered with Seekers’ states is not just a matter of tweaking features – it can reshape your boundaries as a firm, shift alliances, and reconfigure ecosystems. The innovation question arises: where can/should you bundle, unbundle, or reconfigure capabilities to better match Seekers’ evolving journey?

The key is to always keep all three dimensions of Seekers’ progress sought – functional, non-functional and contextual – in mind. Too often, innovation efforts are internally driven, building features or capabilities that don’t map to real progress sought.