Putting Progress in Context
The foundation context layer puts progress itself into context
Progress as a verb and a state transition
Progress is a verb, a continuous journey between two progress states. It can equally be seen as a discrete series of state transitions.
Progress as a State
Progress is a state, comprising three equally important dimensions: functional, experiential, and contextual.
Progress as a noun
It is useful to name several specific states. Several act as waypoints – progress origin, sought and offered – whereas there indicate judgements – progress reached and progress potential.
Progress Sought
The more desirable progress state that a Seeker wishes to reach. Upon reaching it, maximum improvement in well-being has emerged (often felt as maximum value). It may have elements inserted by one or more Externalities.
Progress Origin
The progress state for a) where a Seeker starts their progress attempt and b)where a Helper’s proposition assumes the start point is.
The Progress Economy
your new operational model for innovation and growth
Tag: Progress
Anchor your thinking around progress as the fundamental unit of strategy. When organisations do so, innovation and sales become more systematic, predictable, and ultimately more successful.
For decades, strategy has been organised around the pursuit of value. That perspective (value-in-exchange) has been wildly successful in the past, but it has important limitations. Value is often difficult to define, difficult to measure, and difficult for stakeholders to agree upon. More importantly, it provides an incomplete lens for today’s modern world. As a result, it can unintentionally constrain innovation and sales efforts.
The Progress Economy proposes a different unit of analysis: progress.
Progress is the movement, over time, from a starting point (origin) to a more desired state (progress sought)
progress: moving, over time, to a more desired state
To make progress a practical management concept, we define it through five complementary constructs:
- Progress as a state, comprising three equally important dimensions
- Progress as a verb, representing the journey itself
- Progress as a state transition, an alternative view of the journey
- Progress as a noun, referring to key named states that enable analysis and judgement points
- Progress as a measure, allowing us to quantify amounts of progress, either naturally or through artificial scales
Two named states that are important to know when understanding are progress sought and progress origin. The former is the desired state a Seeker wishes to reach, the later is the state they are currently. Many theories focus on the progress s ought, few see the important origin.
Once we understand the nature of progress, we can turn our attention to a more practical question: how is progress made?
(We do not abandon the concept of “value”. Rather, The Progress Economy reveals the various forms of what we tend to call value are actually comparisons of progress states. This further points to using progress as the unit of strategy).
