The progress economy’s underlying premise: making progress to their more desired state is everything a Progress Seeker wants.

Progress as a verb: gliding to progress sought

At the very heart of the progress economy is the observation that individuals and organisations desire to move, over time, to a more desired state with all aspects of their life.

It’s why we call them Progress Seekers (or Seeker for short).

Whether it’s acquiring a new language, repairing a car, cooking a romantic dinner, travelling somewhere, analysing data for insights, seeking medical care, hanging up a picture frame, and more, everyone is engaged in the pursuit of progress.

Collins define the verb to progress as:

to move over a period of time to a stronger, more advanced, or more desirable state

Collins

It’s a definition that resonates with the progress economy. If we fold the notions of “stronger” and “more advanced” into “more desired state,” we get our definition of progress:

progress: moving over time to a more desired state

Progress (as a verb) is one of five perspectives on progress. To explore it more, we’ll need to grab 2 of the strategic, named, progress states: progress origin and progress sought.

Progress sought

As we’ve discussed, Seekers want to reach their more desired state; which we call the progress sought. Like all progress states, it consists of three aspects: functional, non-functional, and contextual.

We do need to be careful. It’s easy to confuse progress sought for a job to be done. We might think progress sought is to learn Mandarin, get to Monaco, hang a picture, defend against missile attack and so on. But those are activities, not end states.

Progress sought is about where the Seeker wants to reach. So, we should frame it as: able to speak Mandarin at a business level, having arrived in Monaco, seeing the picture hanging on the wall, prevented missiles reaching targets. From this we can see that speaking Mandarin at business level is a different, but similar, progress sought from speaking it enough for a holiday.

This distinction of activity and state, matters. It clarifies what success looks like; and, as we’ll shortly see, what maximum value to the Seeker is.

Progress origin

Where a Seeker starts their journey is just as important as where they want to reach. We call this their progress origin, and we see it as inherently unique to each Seeker.

Take the example of learning Mandarin Chinese. Two people may share the same progress sought of fluency at a business level, but begin from very different origins. One may already speak another tonal language, giving them a head start. The other may have no exposure to tonal languages at all.

Recognising this origin point is critical. It shapes the effort required for what we’ll call the progress journey and the Seeker’s likelihood of success. It will also later inform us of the relevance of different propositions to a Seeker.

Progress journey

We can tie the progress origin, progress sought, and notion of progress as verb, together as a progress journey.

A Seeker’s journey is their act of moving, over time, from their unique progress origin toward their desired progress sought. It’s the action, the verb of functional progress: learning, traveling, hanging the picture. As well as the verb of non-functional progress: feeling safe, becoming more autonomous, self-actualising etc; and the verb of progressing with context.

However, this journey can be interpreted differently for each aspect of progress states, as follows:

• functional – this usually changes between progress origin and progress sought
• non-functional – change this may be included in the purpose of the journey, for example where you’d like to increase your feeling of autonomy; it may also stay the same, for example, feeling safe over the journey
• contextual – this may also stay the same or change…but we’ll decide this never changes across a journey (we’ll discuss this when looking at the practicalities if analysing progress in a moment)

The journey tells us the job to be done, enumerates success, and informs us where it starts. It’s helpful to visualise this.

Introducing the progress diagram

We can draw the progress journey as the following progress diagram, a format we’ll repeatedly use in the progress economy:

Fundamentally, progress seekers look to progress from their current state – their progress origin on the left – to their more desired state of progress sought on the right. That progress journey affects the three aspects of progress state – functional, non-functional and contextual – which we represent as three circles.

There are a couple of practical aspects we should address when exploring progress.

Practicalities of exploring progress making

While the concept of progress is simple, it is also deeply powerful. Its effective application as a tool requires us to consider how progress plays out in real-world. That’s a world where priorities compete, resources are limited, and decisions must be made.

Focussing on aspects in isolation

While a Seeker is always pursuing progress in all areas of their life, practical analysis demands focus. We typically isolate particular aspects of progress to keep the scope manageable and the insight actionable.

However, these isolated progress attempts don’t always operate independently. They can be interlinked, reinforcing or competing with one another. In some cases, progress in one area may unintentionally contradict progress in another.

There’s no fixed rulebook for spotting these interdependencies, but it’s important to stay alert to them. Recognising these overlaps can surface hidden trade-offs and open up more integrated, effective solutions.

A note on (not) making contextual progress

While it’s tempting to consider a Seeker targeting all three aspects of progress – functional, non-functional, and contextual – in a single attempt, we’ve found it more effective to analyse progress by holding the contextual element constant. This is, the context at the progress sought is the same as the context at the progress origin.

So what happens when a Seeker wants to change their context? The cleaner move is to treat that as a separate progress attempt, anchored in functional or non-functional progress that enables the contextual shift.

Take this example: if someone’s current context is “not knowing how to drive,” that sets a constraint on progress attempts involving travel. To change the context, the Seeker would initiate a new progress attempt where the functional progress sought is “learned to drive.”

Stabilising of contextual progress in an attempt keeps the logic clear, the effort focused, and the modelling more precise.

Constraining progress: externalities

Talking of constraining progress, this is aa good point to introduce externalities, such as governments (laws). They insert progress elements into progress sought to protect individuals, organisation or society. And, those elements might be against the Seeker’s wishes, or things they may not have thought of.

An example is useful to explain this. Say a Seeker wants to use a new gas appliance in their home. An externality – in this case often a government or regulator – will require that work to be performed by a certified gas engineer. They do so to safeguard both the Seeker and those in the neighbourhood from faulty installations, potentially resulting in explosions and loss of life.

In the progress economy, we see this as being inserted into a Seeker’s progress sought. That is “performed by a certified gas engineer” is part of the Seeker’s contextual progress sought. Why? It’s because it makes sense. By inserting it, the externality forces our view that the Seeker needs to seek it (even if they, themselves, do not wish to). This has implications for the Seeker when they make a progress attempt – they may lack the capability to meet that. And implications for progress propositions – a Helper can provide a resource that addresses the Seeker’s capability lack; or can help a Seeker become certified, or…

Progress as a state transition: stepping to progress sought

An alternate, but equivalent, way of looking at progress is to consider it as a state transition between progress origin and progress sought. We show this below:

Such a state transition diagram allows us to visualise other named states, such as progress reached and progress potential at any given time. Along with how any propositions progress offered aligns with progress sought.

So now we’ve got the fundamentals of the progress-forward perspective in our minds, how does it tie to value?

Value emerges as progress is made

Our push in the progress economy is to move from a value-first perspective to a progress-forward one. But we can’t magic away value, it’s a phenomenon deeply ingrained in our everyday thinking. Nor should we. Value has a useful role in measuring and communicating progress.

Seeing progress as we describe allows us to take the fundamental leap to understand that value emerges from progress. It is a set of progress comparisons.

This is important as Anderson and Narus found that suppliers struggle to answer basic questions like, “How do you define value?” or “Can you measure it?”:

“remarkably few suppliers in business markets are able to answer…” questions like “…How do you define value? Can you measure it?”

Anderson and Narus (1998) ”Business Marketing: Understand what customers value”

Progress answers those quetions. When considering the two strategic progress states we find that:

• zero value exists for the seeker at their progress origin, only the potential for value, as no progress has been made
• maximum value has emerged when they reach progress sought, as that is their more desired state

Which is exactly what we show on our progress diagram.

What happens between these end points? The Seeker makes progress between them, and, in doing so, value progressively emerges. For simplicity we conceptualise value emerging in a linear fashion. That is, half way through the journey, you would expect half of the value to have emerged.

We call this value-through-progress:

value-through-progress: value progressively emerges as progress is made

Value-through-progress is one of the key contributions of the progress economy. By shifting from value-in-exchange – our traditional model – we resolve many blind spots that are now impacting our growth. This shift also gives us a more systematic way to understand sales and innovation (through progress attempts, progress propositions and six progress hurdles that emerge as we build out this framework).

Value: a set of progress comparisons

To sharpen our understanding of value as something that emerges from progress, it helps to recognise that value is the result of progress comparisons. At this stage there are two views of value: potential and emerged value.

We’ve said that when the Seeker is at their progress origin, no value has yet emerged, there is only the potential to make progress.

Potential value is the evaluation the Seeker makes, at some point in time, of how close to their progress sought do they feel they can reach. They make a phenomenological judgement – one based on their past experiences and current situation – of their progress potential (another progress state) and compare that to their progress sought. The smaller the gap, the greater their perception of potential value.

If the potential is high enough, they will start the journey – their journey becomes a progress attempt.

During their journey, at points in time, Seekers also phenomenologically judge their current progress state (progress reached) and compare that to their progress sought. Again, the smaller the gap, the greater the perception of emerged value. This explains why there is no emerged value at the origin (since there is no progress reached, the gap is largest), and maximum value only emerges when the Seeker reaches their sought state (where progress reached equals progress sought, ie the gap is closed).

But whilst we conceptually see value emerging in a linear manner as progress is made, the Seeker may not feel that. We solve that through the concept of value recognition.

Seekers need to recognise emerged value

When does the value that emerges through progress become meaningful to a Seeker?

Here an example helps our thinking. Let’s say the functional part of our progress journey is the simplistic “travel 100km from where I am”. How valuable is reaching 80km to the Seeker?

The answer is, it depends on the seeker, that particular attempt, and the non-functional and contextual progress elements.

For some seekers, every kilometre is meaningful as they are getting closer to their progress sought. If you have no other constraints, you’d likely recognise each kilometre travelled as value to you.

But what if you have to reach 100km by a set time, and have only reached 80km. Now that 80km has no value to you – it’s no better than having not started (perhaps worse if the attempt diverted you from other progress you could have attempted instead).

We say that a seeker needs to recognise value for it to be meaningful to them. This is a phenomenological decision they make. It’s akin to revenue recognition for any accountants out there (where revenue is generated continuously, but is only recognised in accounts for firm when certain conditions are met).

And this is how value emerges from progress. It’s a Seeker’s set of phenomenological comparisons of progress. The details are slightly more complex as we have 3 elements of progress, and we’ll add more comparisons as we explore progress attempts and propositions – but now we have a systematic framework, so everyone should be better able to define and measure value.

Why this matters

In today’s hypercompetitive environment, growth hinges on a company’s ability to create meaningful, differentiated value for customers. Yet most firms struggle to define what that value actually is, how to measure it, or how to align innovation and sales to deliver it. The Progress Economy reframes the challenge: value doesn’t exist in the abstract – it emerges as customers make progress toward their desired outcomes.

This shift from “value-in-exchange” to “value-through-progress” offers a more precise and operational model for strategy, product development, and go-to-market execution. By understanding each customer’s unique starting point (progress origin), end goal (progress sought), and journey in between, CxOs can design offerings that better fit real-world needs, command premium pricing, and reduce wasteful innovation.

It also clarifies why customers buy, how they judge success, and when value actually lands. That means clearer messaging, better segmentation, and more efficient growth investments. For leaders serious about escaping commoditisation and driving breakthrough performance, the progress lens isn’t just helpful – it’s foundational.

Now we’ve set the basic scene of a progress journey, we move onto exploring the mechanics of making those journeys and find further insights. Let’s explore progress attempts.