Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Author Geoffrey Moore makes the case that high-tech products require marketing strategies that differ from those in other industries. His chasm theory describes how high-tech products initially sell well, mainly to a technically literate customer base, but then hit a lull as marketing professionals try to cross the chasm to mainstream buyers. This pattern, says Moore, is unique to the high-tech industry.
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.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Must read for anyone in high tech marketing
Customer Rating:
For a book on high tech that was first published nearly two decades ago to feel so relevant today is a testament to the ideas and writing of Geoffrey Moore. Its frankly pretty amazing how Moore seems like he's discussing the various success and failures of the social networks and their adoption issues (friendster, myspace, and facebook).
The genius of this book is not the discussion of how technology adoption follows a normal distribution. The genius is in Moore's research around how to increase your chances for taking a technology or idea from its early nascent days to mainstream success. The key as Moore lays it out is in the attitudinal differences between members of the Early Adopters and the Early Majority. The early adopters he argues are typically Technologists and Visionaries, and can see the possibilities of what a technology represents. They are more willing to play with immature technologies (in the case of Technologists, it's a geek thing we wouldn't understand, in the case of visionaries, it's about pushing what's possible further along). In order to continue to grow the business beyond this early set of customer you have to prove your value to the pragmatists that make up the Early Majority who want to go with a proven leader. This is the chasm, to shift from the Early Adopters to the Early Majority if you will. This is where a great number of companies falter and don't last.
The key per Moore, and frankly it jives really well with my admittedly anecdotal experience, is to focus on a small segment, while keeping your end goal in mind. To do this, you have to pick the right segment to focus your efforts on in order to build out the product. Moore argues that in order to know whether your segment is the right size or is truly a segment, you have to a small enough community that can generate word of mouth completely on its own. To me this is sound advice no matter the truth of whether technology adoption occurs this way or not, as it forces companies to focus on a relatively small group of customers with common concerns, which in and of itself is a great thing. It means that the service/product is going to get developed completely for a group of people instead of trying to be all things to all people.
Moore has a great analogy, to describe this strategy. He calls it D-Day. Your end goal is the liberation of Europe. In order to do this, you need first to get a foothold in Europe. To do this you must gather all of your resources and position them to come out of the early adopter market (England) and send them onto a focused point (Normandy) in a rapid manner in order to cross the chasm (English Channel), and ultimately to success (mass market appeal).
There are tons of other great insights in this book (from understanding the need for a larger ecosystem of companies to define a value chain, to positioning yourself relative to your competition).
Complete review of this and other interesting non-fiction can be found at www.cosmicwanderlust.com
Worth reading
Customer Rating:
Nutshell review - An interesting concept and well written book describing how companies need to make the jump from the early adopters of their products to main-stream users in order to truly reap the rewards and succeed. However, as is often the case with these types of books, it could have been written in fewer pages. Worth reading nonetheless.
Surprisingly Real
Customer Rating:
It is amazing how this book describes, through real examples, they key role that the marketing plays in the massive adoption of a technology. Although most of the ideas should be known by most of the technological marketing people, this book must be a reference for newcomers.
Crossing the Chasm
Customer Rating:
I've bought copies of Crossing the Chasm for two customers and one associate. I guess that means I'm impressed.
Few books, IMHO, can have a profound "life altering" effect on a business. E-Myth Revisited was one. This is another. It provides a very well thought out and persuasive strategy for transitioning a high-tech product from a geek market into the mainstream.
A must read if you have a highly advanced product and are struggling to get traction in the market place.
How companies "grow up"
Customer Rating:
Having already read the sequel, Inside the Tornado, I wondered whether this book had essentially been summarized in that one. While the basic premise of the technology adoption lifecycle is common to both books, this book, as the name implies, gives much more focus and detail to the stage of "crossing the chasm". This translates to the time between the first few big sales (from innovators) and the point where there are steady (and growing) sales (from pragmatists). This is a particularly troubling time for most companies because what worked on those first few will FAIL on the next customers, because they are more risk-averse. This book does a fantastic job of not only explaining what needs to be done, but WHY as well.
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