The Progress Economy

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

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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.

Why this matters

An staggaring 94 percent of executives are dissatisfied with their innovation initiatives (McKinsey), and growth continues to stall .- prompting the IMF to warn of a looming “tepid twenties”.

Innovation remains stubbornly difficult under mainstream approaches that treat creativity as the primary objective. Creativity matters, but without direction and grounding, it easily devolves into what Steve Blank aptly calls innovation theatre.

Some of that grounding comes from management discipline: innovation funnels, staged funding, and kill-quick models. But it also depends on making better choices about where to focus effort in the first place. This is where the progress economy’s definition of innovation adds something fundamentally different. It provides operational guidance through clear identification of progress levers.

With those levers in view, innovation shifts from guesswork to intentional exploration. You choose which levers to pull and where to apply creative energy. Creativity still matter, but it is now focused by a relentless commitment to progress. Delivering exactly what the Seeker wants: the best possible movement toward their desired state, with the lowest hurdles and the fastest recognition of benefit (progress, interpreted as value).

This is how we begin to truly compete against luck.

Progress Levers

Rolling out of our progress economy definition of innovation are a number of progress levers we can leverage for operationalising innovation.

progress levers: aspects that guide creativity when improving progress

High-level levers

Several levers come directly from the definition of innovation:

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

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…

Concepts explained by progress levers

Our view of progress as an operating system reveals more of these levers:

• Recognising Seekers’ progress sought and progress origins evolve over time – you need to, as Drucker tells us, !innovate or die”
• Segmenting propositions by progress (sought and/or origin) is more powerful compared to demographic segmentation
• more…

Welcome to the lever gallery

Here then is a gallery of the progress levers that are currently defined! [Future note: how can navigation be better performed?]

Why this matters

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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.

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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