Tag: Progress

Anchor your thinking around Seekers’ progress and minimising progress hurdles, and you will outperform on innovation, sales, and growth, compared to those stuck on product features and focusing on value.



What is value?

What we’re thinking

Progress – moving over time to a more desired state – is the new philosophy for understanding how the world works, solving the challenges our traditional value-first view gives us.

Imagine a world where innovation lands, sales resonate, and growth accelerates – not because we focused on value, which is surprisingly hard to actionably define, but because we focus on what we are truly looking for: progress. Value, it turns out, emerges from progress comparisons.

Progress is the beating heart of the progress economy. We’re all trying to make progress in every aspect of life: with our bodies, possessions, mental state, information, and intangible assets. We seek to get fitter, move faster, fix things, learn more, travel, reach goals – or simply get through the day more effectively. Progress is everywhere.

It is a:

  • state comprised of three dimensions: functional, non-functional, and contextual/li>
  • verb – moving over time to a more desired state
  • state transition – an alternative way of looking at progress as a verb
  • noun – it’s beneficial to name several states, such as progress origin, progress sought, progress offered, progress reached, progress potential
Why this matters

This framework reveals the engine behind everything from Jobs-to-be-Done and Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma, to Blue Ocean Strategy, Drucker’s innovate or die, Levitt’s warning of marketing myopia, the why behind Agile, and how to minimise the blind spots in our traditional value-in-exchange model (such as circularity); and much more.

Progress gives us the clarity and tools to better uncover innovations, craft sharper go-to-market strategies, and build offerings that resonate more deeply with the people we serve.

  • well-being-through-progress

    The progress economy reframes value creation by focusing on progress rather than static value. Progress is seen as a dynamic movement towards a more desirable state, with value emerging as this progress is made. This approach encourages systematic innovation by addressing progress hurdles and recognizing the complexities and multifaceted nature of value creation.

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  • Progress Offered

    What we’re thinking Progress offered is the progress state – capturing functional, non-functional and contextual aspects – a progress proposition offers to help a seeker reach. Ideally, it should match an individual seeker’s current progress attempt’s progress sought. However, such customisation can significantly raise the equitable exchange progress hurdle. To address this challenge, helpers often segment seekers

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  • Progress Potential

    What we’re thinking Progress potential is the progress state that an actor phenomenologically judges, at particular moment in time, could be reached in a progress attempt. It is regularly judged by progress seekers as part of their decision process to start and continue progress attempts, alone or with propositions. Progress helpers predict it for their

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  • Progress Sought

    What we’re thinking Progress sought is the more desirable progress state – capturing functional, non-functional, and contextual elements – that a progress seeker wishes to reach. Upon reaching progress sought, the seeker likely recognises maximum value. It complements progress origin, giving us a fuller picture of a seeker’s journey and the gaps towards that. It also has

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  • Progress Reached

    What we’re thinking Progress reached is the progress state that an actor phenomenologically judges to have been reached at a specific point during a progress attempt. These judgements relate to value in two ways. First it indicates how much value an actor feels has emerged by that point. Secondly, we find that for emerged value

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  • Progress Origin

    Progress origin captures an individual seeker’s starting state for the current progress attempt. It also captures the starting state a proposition offers to help make progress from. These two origins are likely to differ.

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  • Progress as a verb and a state transition

    The progress economy’s underlying premise: making progress to their more desired state is everything a Progress Seeker wants. What we’re thinking In the progress economy we believe Progress Seekers are trying to make progress with everything in their life. They are trying to get from their current progress origin to their more desired state (progress

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  • Progress as a State

    Progress has three, equally important, dimensions – functional, non-functional and contextual. Not understanding one or more will sink your innovation, sales, and growth. What we’re thinking Progress is a state – a snapshot comprising three elements, namely: Identifying and understanding all three elements is critical for understanding seeker’s desires, making progress, progress propositions, value, and

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  • Progress as a noun

    Several progress states – the waypoints and phenomenological determinations – are important enough in the story of progress that we specifically name them What we’re thinking In the Progress Economy, some progress states are significant enough to name explicitly. They serve as: These states form the basis for the story of how value emerges from

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  • Progress Hurdles

    What we’re thinking We’re eager to make progress…but what if we’re lacking the resources we need to do so?! Perhaps we lack the skills, knowledge, tools, maybe strength, or time, or… We’ve hit the foundational progress hurdle of the progress economy!! Luckily, progress propositions offer supplementary resources that aim to lower this hurdle. But, they

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