Crossing the Chasm

Moore suggests remedies for the problem that can help businesses meet their long-term goals. He coaches marketing professionals on how to move slowly through the gulf, teaching them to create profiles and target specific segments of the population rather than trying to plow right into the mainstream. He cites examples of successful chasm crossings by such companies as Apple, Tandem, Oracle, and Sun, showing what they all had in common and exposing the different weaknesses in their strategies. Moore also assigns responsibility for success to programmers and developers by suggesting they design a "whole product model." Here, because integration tasks are daunting to the mainstream market, all the components of a technological product must be in one package. Moore also describes strategies for competing with rival companies and assessing the best distribution channels for penetrating the target market.

Written not just for marketing specialists but for all employees whose futures ride on the success of a technical product, Crossing the Chasm delivers crucial information in an engaging, readable tone.

In his subsequent book, Inside the Tornado, Moore's use of the "tornado" metaphor correctly suggests that turbulence of unprecedented magnitude has occurred within the global marketplace which the WWW and the Internet have created. Moreover, such turbulence is certain to intensify. Which companies will survive? Why? I have only one (minor) quarrel with the way these two books have been promoted. True, they provide great insights into marketing within the high technology industry. However, in my opinion, all e-commerce (and especially B2B) will be centrally involved in that industry. Moreover, the marketing strategies suggested are relevant to virtually (no pun intended) any organization -- regardless of size or nature -- which seeks to create or increase demand for what it sells...whatever that may be. I consider both books "must reading."

Crossing the Chasm details the important gap between Innovators and Early Adopters and then outlines a campaign strategy for crossing that chasm to mainstream marketing success. The book gives many examples of products that crossed the chasm successfully (such as Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft.)

Time and time again, technology companies fail because they are concerned with sales numbers (to please shareholders or investors) or because of a bean-counter mentality or simply insufficient funding. The author Geoffrey Moore uses D-Day and the taking of Omaha Beach as a powerful metaphor for how to establish a beachhead before assaulting the mainstream. Like the beaches of Normandy, high cost and certain losses can be essential to establishing the toehold that stages victory. Also important is the idea that to reach the mainstream market, vendors must provide the a complete solution, including support. This is an area that high-tech companies typically want to skimp on; the Innovator and Early Adopter types are natural pioneers and self-sufficient. These buyers accept a higher level of product problems and work-arounds. The mainstream majority buyers are pragmatic; they buy a product not for its own sake, or because it is "cool." They buy to get a job done and want a product that does the job and does it trouble-free. A lack of service and complete solutions is one big reason technology firms fall into the chasm with an initially hot-selling product.

The book is not tremendously detailed, but gives clear, understandable examples of how to set up a strategy in order to target a market and select a "must-have" value proposition suitable to drive in a wedge. The most valuable part of the book, in my opinion is the advice on weathering the ongoing pressure of executive management reviews, which can constantly threaten to derail a bold yet workable plan.

This is must reading for anyone in the high-stakes technology market. It's an exciting game, and this book provides important strategies to win.

Crossing the Chasm is the most influential book about high technology in the last 10 years. When I meet with CEOs of the most successful high technology firms, this is the book that they always bring up. What most people do not realize is that Geoffrey Moore did an excellent update of the book in a revised edition in 1999. If you liked the original, you will like the revision even more. It contains many better and more up-top-date examples, and explores several new ways that companies have crossed the chasm that he had not yet observed in 1991 when the original came out (such as "piggybacking," the way that Lotus 1-2-3 built from VisiCalc's initial success).

If you plan to work or invest in any high technology companies, you owe it to yourself to read and understand this book. The understanding won't be hard, because the material is clear and well articulated.

The book's focus is on a well-known psychological trait (referred to as Social Proof in Influence by Robert Cialdini). There is a potential delay in people using new things "based on a tendency of pragmatic people to adopt new technology when they see other people like them doing the same." As a result, companies must concentrate on cracking the right initial markets in a segmented way to get lots of references and a bandwagon effect going. One market segment will often influence the next one. Crossing the Chasm is all about how to select and attack the right segments.

Many companies fail because innovators and early adopters are very interested in new technology and opportunities to create setrategic breakthroughs based on technology. As a result, these customers are not very demanding how easy it is to use the new technology. To cross the chasm, these companies must primarily appeal to the "Early Majority" of pragmatists who want the whole solution to work without having to be assembled by them and to enhance their productivity right away. If you wait too long to commercialize the product or service in this way, you will see your sales shrivel after a fast start with the innovators and early adopters.

The next group you must appeal to are the Late Majority, who want to wait until you are the new standard and these people are very price sensitive. Many U.S. high technology companies also fail to make the transitions needed to satisfy this large part of the market (usually one-third of demand). The final group is technology adverse, and simply hopes you will go away (the Laggards).

The book describes its principles in terms of D-Day. While that metaphor is apt, I wonder how well people under 35 know D-Day. In the next revision, I suggest that Desert Storm or some more recent metaphor be exchanged for this one.

The book's key weakness is that it tries to homogenize high technology markets too much. Rather than present this segmentation as immutable, it would have been a good idea to provide ways to test the form of the psychological attitudes that a given company will face.

The sections on how to do scenario thinking about potential segments to serve first are the best parts of the book. Be sure you do these steps. That's where most of the book's value will come for you. Otherwise, all you will have added is a terminology for describing how you failed to cross the chasm.

I also commend the brief sections on how finance, research, and development, and human resources executives need to change their behavior in order to help the enterprise be more successful in crossing the chasm.

After you finish reading and employing the book, I suggest that you also think about what other psychological perceptions will limit interest in and use of your new developments. You have more chasms to cross than simply the psychological orientation towards technology. You also have to deal with the tradition, misconception, disbelief, ugly duckling, bureaucracy, and communications stalls. Keep looking until you have found and dealt with them all!

May you move across the chasm so fast, that you don't even notice that it's there!

And then just when you assume that the *rest* of the book will be filled with variations on this single idea (like many business books) it goes into second and third gear, with real meat on market segmentation, 'whole products' and vertical vs horizontal market approaches. All of it analytically sound, practical, without the hubris that so often disfigures similar books.

I'm a techie by training, but marketing has been my destiny for the last couple of years. If you, like me, have been sweating to get the four P's to square with your experience in the trenches, get this book!

The book is actually very simple. It just defines what the chasm period is, who is involved, how to define what markets to attack, how to direct your marketing/advertising, how to assemble alliances and partners and even how to prepare your staff during this period.

The author does an excellent job being honest and sincere, explaining the good with the bad. This is truly great as he won't leave your company in the dust when you see big problems after when crossing and after you cross the chasm period. For instance, I would not have thought my pioneer sales staff would be not as effective and slightly frustrated after we haved breached into the mainstream market. After Geoffrey's discussion on compensation and staffing after crossing the chasm, I was convinced that I had not even thought about how each employee would be affected. Some solutions are brutal to fix the problem - but honest.

The book clearly identifies crossing the chasm as a war - and that it is indeed. Marketing, especially in the high-tech field, is warfare. This book will give you the strategies and tactics to launch this type of war campaign. Read it and read it again and then give it to your senior officers to read.

One complaint about the book, is that this clearly focuses on companies building software, hardware, electronics, and etc. that will appeal to multiple markets. If you are building software that you can only clearly see one industry adopting, you basically have already segmented your market. You may choose to segment your target market even further, perhaps by location to go with the book (that's what we did). This book does little in talking about that type of innovation, but if you do some thinking and apply the core principles of the book, you should be able to develop a strategy that works really well.

One other point, by no means a flaw, is that it does little explaining what goes on before the chasm period (hints here and there). If you are even unsure has to how to start a new high-tech business, I suggest that you should read this book but look elsewhere for other resources and perhaps find someone with that knowledge that can help.

All in all, this is one amazing book and I highly recommend it to any high-tech entrepreneur. Now I'm going to read Geoffrey's other book, Inside the Tornado.