Progress propositions aren’t just offers – they’re carefully crafted bundles of supplementary resources you’ve designed to help Seekers make progress. Savvy executives know this, and they unlock sales, innovation, and growth by repeatedly and purposefully aligning their proposed resource mix and progress-making activities with ever evolving Seeker needs. Seekers don’t stand still – neither should your proposition.

Progress Propositions

Let’s explore the why, what, and where of progress propositions to provide the necessary context before diving into their key components.

Why are there progress propositions?

In the progress economy, we see Seekers as individuals or organisations striving to make progress by executing a series of progress-making activities. Each activity involves integrating resources they have access to (where resources are carriers of capability).

When a Seeker lacks the resources to make progress – for example tools, skills, knowledge (including knowledge of the progress-making activities themselves), etc – they encounter the lack of resource progress hurdle. Without overcoming this hurdle, the Seeker will fail to achieve their progress sought, meaning maximum value for them will not emerge.

A Seeker may struggle on themselves, but this is where Progress Helpers come in. Helpers offer supplementary resources (progress propositions) with the aim of enabling Seekers to make progress.

What Drives Helpers to Offer Propositions?

At their core, Helpers are Seekers too. They pursue their own progress that they likely cannot achieve alone because they lack the necessary resources. This progress may be something they desire directly, or it may be due to them assembling progress from other Helpers – whether companies, departments, employees, or partners – in order to craft and offer their proposition to you.

That motivates them to engage in service exchange. It’s a “I help you and you help me” dynamic. However, this is not a barter economy – which Martin tells us didn’t and don’t really exist in Money, the unauthorised biography – and exchanges are rarely direct. Service-dominant logic, one of our foundations, tells us:

Indirect exchange masks the fundamental basis of exchange

#2

In most cases, exchanges are indirect and asynchronous, creating a need for mechanisms that can balance differences in magnitude, timing, and parties involved.

That mechanism is service credits, with cash being a widely adopted and highly effective implementation.

Service credits enable transitive indirect exchanges: “I help you, you give me service credits, I use those credits not with you, but with another Helper.” They also support indirect exchange within organisations and across ecosystems, making it possible to coordinate complex networks of progress propositions even when exchanges don’t happen in a simple, linear fashion.

Service credits are a signal of effort involved in providing a service. They also signal how much effort the Helper requires from a Seeker in return for giving access to their resources. We’d all like exchanges to be equitable, ie we are not undercharging or overpaying. Here we find the inequitable exchange progress hurdle. But we also find business model innovation – exchanges may be one-off, or a series (subscription) or subsidised (eg advertisement based); or even “funded” by another party (frictionless payments, bank loans…).

What are progress propositions?

As mentioned, propositions are offerings of supplementary resources to a Seeker with the aim of helping them make progress. Specifically, the supplementary resources are provided as two bundles:

1. proposed series of progress-making activities – better known as instructions, manuals, recipes, processes, etc
2. progress resource mix – proposition specific mix of six types of resources

When engaging a proposition, the progress attempt becomes a dual endeavour. The responsibility for driving the progress-making activities may rest primarily with the Seeker, the Helper, or both.

Some propositions, known as enabling propositions, place the responsibility for progress-making fully on the Seeker. They must integrate their own and the supplementary resources to make progress.

Other propositions, known as relieving propositions, shift this responsibility to the Helper, who performs all progress-making activities and integrates their own resources with those of the Seeker.

Most propositions exist somewhere along a spectrum – the progress proposition continuum – ranging from fully enabling to fully relieving.

Aligning needs and offers?

Crucially, it is the Seeker who drives the preference for enabling or relieving propositions. As Helpers, we can aim to understand these preferences and shape propositions to match. When there is a mismatch between what a Seeker desires and what a Helper offers, the height of the continuum misalignment progress hurdle increases. Minimising this misalignment is a key factor in making a proposition attractive.

The dual endeavour of progress-making becomes a journey from the proposition’s progress origin to the proposition’s progress offered.

However, these may not perfectly align with the Seeker’s own starting point or their progress soight, unless by happy coincidence or in the case of very simple progress. Helpers may offer the ability to customise a proposition’s end points. But this typically comes at an increased equitable exchange (in simple terms: cost).

This is why Helpers rarely offer fully customisable propositions. Doing so would elevate the equitable exchange hurdle – one of the 5 additional progress hurdles that propositions introduce – to a level most Seekers would find unacceptable. Instead, Helpers usually define the starting and ending states of their offering (we would recommend by using progress as a segmentation approach). Seeker need to judge whether those points are sufficiently useful to justify engagement.

The sales discussion is a powerful moment to align progress aspirations and offering. Innovation can take place here as part of the search for alignment. Similarly, dialog during the use of a proposition can surface further innovation and/or innovation needs

Relation to service (singular)

We can view the execution of a progress proposition as a service (singular), aligning closely with Vargo and Lusch’s foundational definition:

service: the application of competences (knowledge and skills) for the benefit of another party

Vargo & Lusch (2008) “From Goods to Service(s): Divergences and Convergences of Logics”

Progress propositions can be direct or indirect service. Direct service involves immediate application of competences by the Helper, while indirect service refers to competences that are frozen and distributed—typically in the form of goods—and then unfrozen by the Seeker through acts of resource integration.

We can further draw on Grönroos’ definition of service to reinforce why a progress proposition is inherently made up of a series of progress-making activities and a progress resource mix.

Grönroos describes service as consisting of two key elements:

• A set of resources provided by the service provider, which we define in detail as the progress resource mix.
• A series of provider activities, which maps directly to our progress-making activities.

We expand Grönroos’ view of the provider’s resource elements to include data and locations as possible elements in the resource mix.

Where do they come from?

Fundamentally, new propositions emerge when an actor finds ways to either make progress better or make better progress. This appears as improvements in the progress-making activities, changes to the progress resource mix, or both.

Sometimes these improvements are discovered accidentally. Other times, they surface during the aligning phase of sales conversations. But more often, they are the deliberate outcome of focused research, development, and innovation activities.

It should be noted that a key reason many innovation initiatives fail is their lack of disciplined focus on what will actually be useful to Seekers. The progress economy solves for this by offering a laser focus on progress as the anchor for sales, innovation and relevance.

Since propositions are themselves resources, the ways we discover them align with the same mechanisms by which Seekers and Helpers find other valuable resources:

• observation/imitation: by observing others making progress attempts (from own and other market/industires)
• finding in environment:
• experience: hands-on involvement in progress attempts
• experimentation/innovation: using resources available to them, or combining them, in new ways; or creating new resources
• education and training: taking formal education and training programs to acquire specific capabilities (eg skills and knowledge from a teacher, or strength from weight training)
• acquiring/collaborating with: other helpers
• from other exchanges they are involved in

Putting propositions in context

Here’s how progress propositions fit into the context of the progress economy. They build upon progress attempts context, adding the progress resource mix, the proposed progress-making activities, as well as introducing 5 additional progress hurdles.

Let’s start unpacking some of this new terminology, starting with the proposition’s progress origin.

Editing below here

Progress offered

Obvious one to focus on

Propositions offer to help a seeker reach the state of progress offered.

Ideally, progress offered matches each individual seeker’s progress sought. However, for non-simplistic progress, the effort that requires from a helper translates into a higher equitable exchange request to engage. That usually increase the equitable exchange progress hurdle (one of the five new progress hurdles related to the existence of a proposition).

To illustrate, consider the effort a helper puts in to create a tailor made suit compared to an off-the-peg one. The tailor’s higher service effort warrants a more substantial service in return to be seen as equitable by both parties (which, if this is an indirect exchange, typically translates to a higher number of service credits).

The progress diamond helps us visualise this interface between progress offered and progress sought. And it is in the functional and non-functional elements that we see drifting. Currently we don’t see trade-offs in contextual progress.

Helpers elect to offer their progress offered based on strategic decisions. One approach is to segment the market on progress sought (a better approach than traditional ways) and then build one or more segment attractive offers.

By segmenting they look at both functional and non-functional aspects. That feeds directly into Porter’s Generic Competitive Strategies (differentiation vs cost). That is to say, helpers look at mainstream progress and decide which components can be decreased (cost) and which can be increased (differentiation). Supermarket self checkouts are a good example of getting this wrong.

Expanding on that, a helper can also add or remove progress components to the mainstream view. Now we’re talking about the main tool in Kim and Mauborgne Blue Ocean Strategy, aiming to identify markets that are uncontested.

Finally, sometimes seekers engage a proposition not originally intended for the progress being sought, but which the seeker sees as having an advantageous progress offered for their purposes.

Implications of mismatched progress offered and sought

The upshot of progress offered is that seekers find several propositions. Each offering to help them make varying amounts of functional and non-functional progress within a specified contextual progress. And each proposition comes with varying levels of six progress hurdles, mainly the equitable service exchange one.

We can visualise this situation as follows.

A seeker then needs to judge which proposition has:

• highest and sufficient progress potential (the best progress offered related to their progress sought)
• lowest progress hurdles

progress origin

Less obvious but equally important. If proposition origin is too far away it affects decision to engage/progress made

Progress-making activities

Proposed series of activities. Can be missing for the Seeker. Not necessarily mandatory. Can be encoded into a system, that makes them mandatory. Relieving propositions can hide the activities internally giving commercial protection. Enabling propositions hide skills and knowledge within the frozen goods, but need to give proposed progress-making activities to the Seeker, ie how to use the goods.

The helper’s proposed progress-making activities constitute another essential resource bundle in a proposition.

This aligns with the concept seen in a progress attempt, where a series of progress-making activities is undertaken; this time to achieve the progress offered, judged by the seeker as sufficiently close to their progress sought. Each progress-making activity is an act of resource integration.

In contrast to progress attempts, progress propositions introduce key distinctions:

• this series of activities is now proposed by the progress helper
• activities are performed by some combination of the seeker and helper
• resource integrations are some combination of seeker resources and supplementary resources in the proposition’s progress resource mix.

Here’s how the difference between a progress attempt with and without a proposition looks like.

In our daily lives we encounter these proposed activities under more familiar names, such as:

• instructions
• operating manuals
• recipes
• processes
• contract terms etc

These proposed activities are often not mandatory for the seeker to follow. Seekers can opt to use their own devised activities. When was the last time you unboxed a new electrical device and read the manual before using? Although a helper may embed the activities within a system or outline them in a specific contractual manner to enforce their usage.

Just like with progress attempts, this series of progress-making activities is an operant resource; as such, service-dominant logic tells us they are a source of strategic benefit. The quality of the proposed activities directly influences progress and, consequently, the emergence of value.

Proposition misuse: Value destruction

Deviating from the suggested steps can be viewed as a misuse of resource, or lead to misusing other resources. That potentially leads to value co-destruction.

Role of the Seeker

Traditional service literature has largely approached this from a service provider–centric perspective, which differs from the Progress Economy’s Seeker-first view, though both arrive at a similar foundational insight: the Seeker is an active participant in value creation.

Bitner et al (1997) were among the first to highlight the customer’s active role in shaping service outcomes and influencing their own satisfaction and value received. They identified customers as a:

1. productive resource;
2. contributor to quality, satisfaction and value; and
3. competitor to the service organization

Bitner et al (1997) “Customer Contributions and Roles in Service Delivery”

Bitner’s framing presents the customer as a “partial employee of the service provider”, with the provider primarily responsible for delivering the service and the customer contributing as required.

In contrast, the Progress Economy inverts this relationship: the Seeker is the primary driver of progress, and the Helper may temporarily take on the role of partial or even full employee. Still, the key insight holds: Seekers are productive resources in their own progress-making attempts.

This matters significantly when designing progress propositions. It is essential to understand which progress-making activities the Seeker can perform; and, just as importantly, which they want to perform.

Bitner et al.’s second point is particularly relevant: involving Seekers increases their likelihood of achieving their desired outcomes.

Payne et al introduce us to the concept of a series of activities in their paper on “Managing the co-creation of value”, but define them as performed by the customer.

The customer’s value creation process can be defined as a series of activities performed by the customer to achieve a particular goal.

Payne, A. F., Storbacka, K., and Frow, P. (2006) “Managing the co-creation of value”

Bettencourt, Vargo, and Lusch (2014) expanded this to perhaps be a joint approach lead by the customer:

the customer is a job (co-)executor who acts in conjunction with the firm to provide service to get a job done

Bettencourt, Vargo & Lusch (2014) “A Service lense on Value Creation”

This insight evolved in the literature into the broader concept of value co-creation, and, further, aligns closely with job-to-be-done thinking. In the Progress Economy, we interpret this simply: making progress is always a joint endeavour. Value emerges as progress is made and is evaluated through a series of progress comparisons.

Further elaborating on the role customers, are Storbacka and Lehtinen (2001) who see customers having multiple roles:

a customer (payer), a consumer, a competence provider, a controller of quality, co-producers and/or co-marketers.

Storbacka and Lehtinen (2001) “Customer Relationship Management: Creating Competitive Advantage Through Win-win Relationship Strategies”

Finally, Bitner et al’s third point reminds us that Seekers can also be competitors to a helper’s proposition – in that they sometimes chose to do the job (make the progress) themselves. Back to Bettencourt, Vargo & Lush (2014), where they note:

While the customer always participates in value creation, the customer can have a more or less active role in the service provision itself….

…thus, in matching its resources and capabilities, a company must decide where on a continuum of “enabling” to “relieving” service it will be because this impacts the service role of the customer.”

Bettencourt, Lusch, and Vargo. (2014) “A Service Lens on Value Creation”

It is from here that we pull out the concept of the progress proposition continuum – a continuum between relieving and enabling. Though our continuum positions both Seeker and propositions. The gap between a Seeker’s desired position and a proposition’s position on this continuum becomes a progress hurdle.The hurdle is higher when there is a mismatch—for example, when a Seeker wants to be fully enabled but is only offered a fully relieving proposition.

Progress resource mix

6 types of resources that a Seeker integrates with – not all are required, it is specific to proposition.

• Employees (operant): humans, or AI, that Seeker interacts with
• Systems (operant or operand)
• Data (operand)
• Goods – both physical and digital (operand)
• Physical resources – goods where ownership is temporarily transferred (operand)
• Locations (operand): specialised places where progress is made, eg hospitals, platforms, web sites

Not every resource type needs to be included in a particular mix; a single item like a nail can serve as a straightforward, one-item resource mix.

Here’s a couple of example mixes, in a useful way to visualise them:

The composition of the resource mix often sheds light on the nature of the proposition, indicating whether it leans toward enabling or relieving on the proposition continuum.

Altering the mix

Modifying the resource mix is feasible because resources carry capabilities, making them largely interchangeable, though not necessarily in a one-to-one ratio.

For instance, substituting an employee with a goods – such as a tradesman with a hammer – is a toy example of this interchangeability. Goods have the ability to freeze knowledge and skills, enabling their distribution, and are unfrozen during acts of resource integration.

This substitution not only shifts the proposition’s position on the continuum, now leaning towards enabling rather than relieving, but it also affects the supported non-functional requirements. Additionally, it places specific resource demands on the seeker, requiring knowledge, skills, and time, as illustrated in this example.

Introducing additional Progress Hurdles

Whilst the intention of propositions is to address the lack of resource progress hurdle, they may not do so fully. And they may even create a new, different, lack of resource hurdle.

Say, for example, to meet a functional progress of travelling between cities, we offer fly yourself mini aircraft. We might offer a way of attempting progress. But we require the seeker to have skills and knowledge of flying the aircraft – likely a resource they lack.

The mere presence of a progress proposition brings about five additional hurdles that must be minimised.

We have to ensure the seeker feels they can use the proposition. For example it is simple and they can trial it. If you’ve studied innovation then this is Rodgers’ adoptability. And we need to minimise seekers deciding to resist the proposition. Think back to the resistance to nuclear power stations of the past.

Yet another challenge emerges based on the position of the proposition along the continuum we’ve previously discussed. It turns out seekers also position themselves on the continuum when making a progress attempt. They may be looking for non-functional progress that is supported by a relieving proposition. If you’re offering only an enabling proposition, then you are far from what they are seeking.

The seeker’s confidence in your proposition and in you as a helper becomes important. Lower confidence means a higher barrier.

Lastly the seeker needs to feel they exchange of service they are about to partake in with you is equitable. Given most exchanges are indirect, the question the seeker is asking themselves is this: does the effort I need to give (or have given) in providing service elsewhere justify the effort I’m going to get from you.

Lastly, the seeker needs to feel that the exchange of service they are entering with you is equitable. Are they getting enough effort from you for the effort they are giving in return. Since most exchanges are indirect, seekers question is really are you asking for too many service credits for your help.

updating the progress journey decisions process

When engaging a proposition the seeker follows a slightly updated decision process. Now they also need to judge if the progress offered aligns closely enough with their individual progress sought.

We call this updated approach the proposition engagement process. Which you can compare to the earlier progress decision process below.

Now the start and continuation decisions include phenomenological decisions by the seeker on

resource integrations

Service-dominant logic’s 9th foundational premise tells us that all actors are resource integrators:

All social and economic actors are resource integrators

#9

And this is exactly what we see In the progress economy. Both our main actors, seekers and helpers, integrate resources in order to make progress. For example:

• a patient (seeker operant resource) providing background information to a doctor (helper operant resource)
• a teacher (helper operant resource) educating a student (seeker operant resource)
• a customer (seeker operant resource) driving a hire car (helper operand resource)
• a technician (helper operand resource) repairing an object (seeker operand resource)

resource integration – a model

We can also build a model for how resource integration works. Luckily Gallouj & Weinstein (1997) provide such a model to which we can make some very simple tweaks. Below you can see this.

The intention being the final characteristics (far right) are what the seeker experiences. We can interpret those as the aspects of progress sought (or offered) elements. The functional, non-functional and contextual elements. They are achieved through various resource integrations between the items in the rest of the diagram.

The technical characteristics are the operant resources that when acted upon lead to aspects of progress. These are the goods, physical resources, data, locations, processes, systems (operant), and the series of progress- making activities.

On the left we find the skills and competences of the seeker and any helper employees and systems acting as operand resources.

Gallouj & Weinstein identify interesting aspects. Particularly that beneficial characteristics in helper employees are often captured as technical characteristics to ensure they are shared amongst other employees.

Relating to value

Fundamentally, propositions have no value. They offer potential value that emerges when progress is made using them. This view aligns with our foundation in service-dominant logic:

actors cannot deliver value but can participate in the creation and offering of value propositions

#7

Progress is now a joint endeavour of performing resource integration activities. Emerging value can then be seen as being co-created. We inherit from progress attempts that there’s no value before an attempt starts and maximum value when reaching a seeker’s progress sought. As Grönroos writes:

It is of course only logical to assume that the value really emerges for customers when goods and services do something for them. Before this happens, only potential value exists

Grönroos (2004) “Adopting a service logic for marketing”

Which leads to the concept of value-in-use. We prefer to say value-through-progress as this applies to progress attempts with and without engaging progress propositions.

value-through-progress: A view of value creation that sees value as being increasingly created as progress is made. Though this value may be recognised on a different schedule.

Let’s visualise progress and emerging value together:

As we know, a seeker recognises maximum value when they reach their progress sought. And we’ve discussed a proposition’s progress offered often doesn’t match progress sought. So maximum value co-created is usually different to maximum value creation. If it’s lower, the seeker needs to decide if it is sufficient to attempt.

When it is greater it is not always a great sign. That extra progress (value) may mean nothing to the seeker. And it may come at a “cost” of higher progress hurdles. This thinking feeds into Christensen’s disruptive innovation.

Alternatively, that additional progress may be something the seeker didn’t realise they needed. In which case, upon seeing it, it is likely their progress sought evolves to include it (meaning in their eyes it is no longer really additional value).

However, where there is value co-creation, there is the potential for value co-destruction. Which is where progress is being hampered by the action of the seeker and/or helper.

Relating to innovation

Payne tells us the following about helper competitiveness:

If a supplier wants to improve its competitiveness, it has to develop its capacity to either add to the customer’s total pool of resources in terms of competence and capabilities (relevant to the customer’s mission and values), or to influence the customer’s process in such a way that the customer is able to utilize available resources more efficiently and effectively

Payne, A. F., Storbacka, K., and Frow, P. (2006) “Managing the co-creation of value”

Which touches the two resource bundles of a progress proposition:

• progress resource mix – “add to the customer’s total pool of resources in terms of competence and capabilities (relevant to the customer’s mission and values)”
• proposed progress-making activities – “influence the customer’s process in such a way that the customer is able to utilize available resources more efficiently and effectively”

Innovation should focus on creating new, or altering existing, progress resource mix and progress-making activities so that a proposition offers some combination of:

• increasing a seeker’s progress potential (getting them closer to their progress sought)
• improving how to make existing progress better
• reducing one or more of the progress hurdles