Since everyone seems to have an imprecise definition. The closest definition to what I'm defining progress is the one on Wikipedia.

Progress is a change in ideologies, technologies or methods which allows mankind to engage in activities which it was previously unable to engage in or allows it to engage more efficiently in existing activities.
Its hard to not do a circular definition. I would define it more broadly as working towards a preceived benefit. In modern western society, this is unconditionally good. Progress will fix everything. However, back in the day progress was more of a neutral thing.

The old attitude was something along the lines of:
"Your new method might be better but and we can already do that just fine."

Its not until you have capitalism + humanism that you have the idea of comparative advantage and the notion that A is better than B so we should do A now because we can make more money or do more X or make more Y and humans are the masters of our own destiny and humans can decide what's best on their own.

There's a reason why none of those totally awesome inventions back in the days of Heron and Archimedes were adapted for common use. There's a reason why China innovated so many things and didn't take them any further. There's a reason why Europe took over the whole freaking world and capitalism owns all previous forms of economies.