Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Collins Business Essentials)

The point of greatest peril in the development of a high-tech market lies in making the transition from an "early market" dominated by a few visionary customers to a "mainstream market" dominated by a large block of customers who are predominantly pragmatists in orientation, according to Geoffrey Moore in the third edition of this book. The gap between early and mainstream markets is what the author refers to as the "chasm", and many entrepreneurial businesses have fallen into it.

The chasm arises because innovators and early adopters of a new high-tech market have a fundamentally different outlook from that held by mainstream customers. Innovators are the first to try a new technology. They are the enthusiasts who don't care about manuals or user-friendliness or even practical benefits; all they care about is trying out something interesting and different. Visionary early adopters start to care about a new product when they can see that it enables a strategic leap forward, and they tend to be willing to pay for the strategic advantages which they hope the product will bring to them.

Mainstream purchasers, on the other hand, want to see that the product is working well and providing productivity improvements for other people like themselves, before they are willing to buy. The problem is that only other mainstream purchasers are "people like themselves", as references from visionary early adopters tend to be suspect. Thus a product which does well with innovators and early adopters can fall into the chasm because no mainstream purchasers are willing to be the first "people like themselves" to take it on.

The book, which goes on to describe the steps which need to be taken to cross the chasm, has become a classic since the first edition was published in 1991, but the content has been rewritten in the latest edition to bring it right up to date. The real question is whether, in the current environment of disruptive technologies, the principles outlined in the book continue to apply. Downes and Nunes in their book Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation present a very different picture of how innovations start, shoot to prominence, and die out in a very short space of time.

It seems to me that perhaps there is some similarity between the "singularity" early stage of the Big Bang model and the early adopter stage of Moore's model. Many products never make it out of the singularity. Further, perhaps there is no longer a single model that applies to all technology innovations. Undoubtedly there are many products which do follow Moore's model and have to come up with a strategy for crossing the chasm, but perhaps there are other products to which the model does not apply.

In any event, this is a very useful book for any entrepreneur or marketer in a field of technology.

As Geoffrey Moore explains, in the first two editions of this business "classic" and once again in this new one, his purpose is to answer "in considerable detail" two questions: Why can't the same skills applied so effectively in other areas also be applied when marketing high technology? And what is it going to take to get it right?

The "chasm" to which Moore refers is a metaphor for this phenomenon: "the rapid acceleration in market development followed by a dramatic lull, occurring whenever a discontinuous innovation is introduced - [one that] drives all emerging high-tech enterprises to a point of crisis where they must leave the relative safety of their established early market and go out in search of a new home in the mainstream. These forces are inexorable - they will [begin italics] drive [end italics] the company. The key question is whether management can become aware of the changes in time to leverage the opportunities such awareness confers."

In other words, "The chasm is a drastic lull in market development that occurs after the visionary market is saturated and pragmatists will not buy into a discontinuous technology unless they can reference other pragmatists, thus the catch-22. Pragmatists dependent exclusively on references from others in their own industry and are highly support-oriented."

Many business plans are based on a traditional Technology Adoption Life Cycle, a smooth bell curve of high tech customers, progressing from Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and finally Laggards. In turn, this model becomes the foundation for a high-tech marketing model which says the way to develop a market is to work the curve from left to right, progressively winning each group of users, using each "captured" group as a reference for the next. Moore demonstrates that in fact, there are cracks in the curve, between each phase of the cycle, representing a disassociation between any two groups; that is, "the difficulty any group will have in accepting a new product if it is presented the same way as it was to the group to its immediate left." The largest crack, so large it can be considered a chasm, is between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority. Many (most) high tech ventures fail trying to make it across this chasm.

The core insights in the two previous editions remain but Moore updates the companies that serve as exemplars, for better or worse. The successful chasm negotiators include Aruba, Documentum, Infusion, Lithium, Mozilla, Salesforce.com, VMware, and Word Day. They are juxtaposed with companies that include Better Place, Motorola Iridium, Segway, Solyndra, and Webvan. One of the most valuable lessons to be learned from these companies is expressed in the form of an analogy: "Trying to cross the chasm without taking a niche market approach is like trying to light a fire without kindling."

These are among the dozens of business subjects and issues of special interest and value to me, also listed to indicate the scope of Moore's coverage.

o The Technology Adoption Life Cycle (Pages 11-17)
o Discovering the Chasm (25-26)
o First Principles (34-37)
o The Dynamics of Early Markets (48-53)
o The Dynamics of Mainstream Markets (63-67)
o The Perils of the Chasm, and, Fighting Your Way into the Mainstream (75-80)
o Successful Chasm Crossings (89-91)
o The Simplified Whole Product Model (137-150)
o Partners and Allies (150-152)
o The Competitive Positioning Compass (167-171)
o The Positioning Process, and, Passing the Elevator Test (183-188)
o Customer-Oriented Distribution (198-206)
o Financial Decisions: Breaking the Hockey Stick (216-220)
o Organizational Decisions (225-228)
o The Whole Product Manager (231-234)

Thoughtfully, Moore provides a "recap" section at the conclusion of Chapters 4-7. he also adds two appendices to the third edition. In my opinion, all by themselves, they are worth far more than the cost of the book. In Appendix 1, he provides an overview of the process by which markets develop end-to-end, from the Early Market across the Chasm through the Bowling Alley into the Tornado and on to Main Street. "The challenge is to get your company aligned on the right approach by reaching consensus about current market state."

In Appendix 2, "The Four Gears for Digital Consumer Adoption," he explains why online adoption is best characterized in terns of these activities: acquisition of traffic, engagement if users, monetizing their engagement, and enlisting "the faithful." He adds, and I agree, "Tipping points are as key to consumer adoption as they are to B2B. Prior to reaching one, all efforts to scale require pumping in additional fuel -- if you cut off the fuel supply, the system will revert to its original state. But after you pass the tipping point, the system restabilizes around a new status quo, and actually pulls you forward to get you to your new 'right' position. You can still screw this up (just ask the investors at Myspace and Groupon), but it takes some real effort to do so."

Congratulations to Moore on his trilogy of business classics (i.e. Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, and Living on the Fault Line). Albert Einstein once explained that he always asked the same questions on his final examinations at Princeton because "every year the answers are different," Geoffrey Moore continues to revise and update his thinking and his work because, although chasms, tornados, and fault lines remain, the strategies and tactics needed to negotiate them must be continuously evaluated and, when necessary, modified or replaced.

Crossing the Chasm is one of those books that you neglect reading at your peril. Geoffrey Moore has studied that crucial phase in market penetration where any business needs to scale beyond the early adopters to mainstream customers. The market adoption curve illustrates 5 categories of market adopters:

Innovators
Early Adopters
Early Majority
Late Majority
Laggards

There are challenges between all segments of the technology adoption curve, but by far the greatest gap is between Early Adopters and Early Majority - termed by Moore as the CHASM. Crossing that chasm is essentially what makes or breaks a business. I know this from experience and Moore does a great job of describing that challenge. We often hear the advice for a startup or small company, especially in the high tech sectors - find a niche in the market and dominate. To cross the chasm any company will now realise whether there's a market in the niche.

Geoffrey Moore likens this to a war, a battle, an invasion. Which it is!
Plan the invasion, target the point of attack, assemble the forces and launch the invasion.

Fully recommend this book to any entrepreneur as it's another perspective you will need to deal with in growing your successful business.

There are plenty of other reviews out there that will go through the great material in this book around different market segments described in different sections of the bell curve, etc. My problem with this book is the toxic underlying attitude.

There is a subtle but persistent refrain throughout the book that marketing is the only truly valuable profession in high tech and needs to manage less talented/valuable colleagues that is completely toxic. Some examples of this philosophy include:
(1) the patronizing attitude around how to deal with problematic sales and engineering staff while crossing the chasm (Conclusion - Organizational Decisions: From Pioneers to Settlers) and the examples of how marketing is unfairly blamed for product failures (Introduction),
(2) the implication that developers are greedy, unfairly want credit for the product they helped build, but that they don't deserve value and that's okay because the company is better off without them anyway (Conclusion - Compensating Developers)
(3) the suggestion that we need new marketing people as we enter mainstream so that we aren't bound by the promises made to customers earlier by the Product Manager--to be fair, there's a note that these promises will *eventually* be fulfilled or negotiated away (Conclusion: The Whole Product Manager).

Excerpt p. 234: "To sum up, at the beginning of the chasm period, the organization is dominated by pioneers, with strong powers invested in a few top-gun salespeople and product managers. By the time we are into the mainstream market, that power should be distributed far more broadly...this gradual dissemination of authority will ultimately frustrate the pioneer contributors, hampering their ability to make quick decisions and rapid responses. Ultimately, it will make them want to leave."

That's not a company I want to work for and it's not the only way to succeed (I'm working for a company today that is different). There's no attempt to cross the chasm together as a team. Better reads are Simon Sinek's Start with Why (which refers to this material and is where I originally learned about the bell curve distribution and the chasm) or Sean Ammirati's The Science of Growth (which has both examples of high tech failures and successes).

P.S. If you do decide to read this book, don't get the audiobook version. It hasn't been updated as recently as the book and it is hard to take somebody as an expert who talks about "high tech" and "Windows 3.0" in the same breath. I listened to the audiobook version first and then skimmed the book to see the updates before posting this review.

This framework has been around for about 20 years and this edition updates by using more recent examples of companies that did (or did not) manage to cross the chasm. There is a lot of detail in the book, in fact it occasionally got a little repititious but because of the importance of getting it right, it is better to say too much rather than too little. Although there was a lot of complex detail included (including specific job descriptions etc), I liked how Geoffrey presented a easy to remember framework on the fundamentals of how to successfully cross the chasm - you can always look up the detail in book when needed but having the fundamentals in your head is handy. He uses a D-Day invasion analogy that starts with identifying a beach-head (market segment analysis), assembling the invasion force (alliance of service providers for whole of product satisfaction) and launching the invasion (who, how and what to employ, control and monitor). As Geoffrey also notes, the chasm is fundamentally about getting a 'product' with potential that is liked by 'visionaries' to become adopted into the 'market' by 'pragmatists' who comprise most of the market and much of the profit. Just remembering this sort of fundamentals makes the book a worthwhile read for many people (including government staff dispensing support grants etc) even if you dont intend to become a high tech marketeer yourself
happy reading
david in melbourne, australia

Many innovative thinkers have breakthrough ideas for new products or services that would appear on the face to be certain winners. And yet, many of them fail to get to market or fail to achieve a sufficient level of adoption for the business to be sustainable.
Geoffrey Moore delivers a detailed roadmap for any company or individual who wishes to avoid the pitfalls that have scuppered many promising products and businesses.
Business school graduates beware, the marketing knowledge that you are relying on might just be your undoing!
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by reading this book and taking the advice that has led to huge success for some of the most recognizable names in high tech.

--- Summary ---
Everyone loves high-tech. Maybe. Everyone loves innovation. Not really (see also The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun). The question is how to bring an innovative high-tech product into the mainstream market. Many high-tech products get to the innovation and early-adopter market, but fail to reach the mainstream market. The book indeed defines the step between the early adopters and the mainstream as the scary chasm a high-tech product has to cross to get to the success. Additionally, Moore explains that this chasm is extremely dangerous for companies because they have to face this challenging and costly phase after having the first successes with innovators and early adopters. This means getting back to skeptics since the early adopters supporting the product, also called visionaries, do not represent a good reference for the mainstream.

--- Model / Concepts ---
-- The Technology Adoption --
- Innovators – The technology enthusiasts love technology. They spend hours trying to get products to work and forgive ghastly documentation, slow performance, etc. They make great critics because they truly care, and thus represent an excellent reference.
- Early Adopters – The visionaries match an emerging technology to a strategic opportunity. They are looking for a fundamental break through and they are willing to take risks to pursue their goals. They are the least price-sensitive profile and are willing to serve as highly visible reference.
- Early Majority – These are the pragmatists. They want to make incremental, measurable, predictable progress. They are risk averse, are therefore hard to win over, but very loyal once won. They want to buy from proven market leaders and are reasonably price sensitive.
- Late Majority – These are the conservatives, which are against discontinuous innovation since they believe in tradition, not progress. They like to buy complete packages, with everything bundled at heavily discounted price.
- Laggards – Also called the skeptics, they only buy when they must.

-- The Invasion --
Attack a niche market big, where you can become the leader, then use the leadership position to attack the next niche market.

-- The Whole Product --
The whole product is composed of:
- Generic product – what we ship in the box
- Marketing promise – whatever else is needed to achieve the customer’s compelling reason to buy

--- Impact ---
This is clearly a must read book for the high-tech marketing of new products.
The impact is important, as it allows avoiding typical errors bringing to the failure of promising technological innovations. The solutions given in the book are simple yet powerful.
I had the chance to reading it just before we faced the chasm to get to mainstream, and this helped a lot to better focus on the real challenges and to be careful not underestimating the effort of this phase, which is indeed very demanding.
In my opinion, this is the most important book for high-tech marketing!

--- Rating ---
- rating the store – 4.7/5.0 (95 reviews)
- my rating – 5.0/5.0
- fun factor – 4.0/5.0
- simplicity – 4.5/5.0
- impact – 5.0/5.0

Mr. Moore outlines the technology lifecycle by user groups (i.e.; Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and finally Laggards). The thesis defines the “Chasm” as the gap between wide adoption and early mainstream markets.

Effective marketing must account for identifying the specific problem you are attempting to solve for the personas of users you’ve identified. Only in focusing on the specific problem set, may you hope your product will cross this early chasm. In focusing on the specific problem, you are then ready to define your positioning framework. The framework guides all messaging to this market segment. By defining who’s it for, why they are open to a solution, what your solution is, and then how your solution addresses the problems and exceeds what’s available. By extension this this applies to your early roadmap, product development, service, support (i.e.; The Whole Product).

As someone who has no formal training in marketing (indeed somewhat of a poor opinion of it) I found Mr. Moore’s focus on an objective, empirical process enlightening and educational. I may believe solutions I’ve helped develop are superior and new. However, unless I can articulate that quickly to a potential buyer, all our hard work is for naught, and we’ll fall in the chasm. I also found it instructive that this positioning framework goes beyond simple messaging – it will inform your development roadmap and product service / support. Mr. Moore provides invaluable insight on how to shepherd your product through a long adoption cycle.

Moore begins with Everett Rogers' diffusion of innovation theory describing the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members of a social system. The innovation must be widely adopted in order to self-sustain with a critical mass. Adopter categories include innovators (willing to take risks, have the highest social class and great financial liquidity, have closest contact to scientific sources; have risk tolerance, technology is often a central interest in their lives, want access to technically knowledgeable people to solve technical problems), early adopters (highest degree of opinion leadership, higher social status, more financial liquidity, advanced education than late adopters, looking for a breakthrough - not incremental improvement), early majority (about one-third of the total, key to substantial profits and growth, dislike risk), late majority (typically skeptical about an innovation, want preassembled packages at a heavily discounted price, below average social status, very little financial liquidity, another one-third of the total buying population - must be made increasingly easier to adopt to continue being successful by acceptance in this group), and laggards (below average social status, very little financial liquidity, oldest of the adopters, limited social contacts, generally regarded as not worth pursuing - about 1/6th of the market). Individuals experience 5 stages of accepting a new innovation - knowledge (exposed to an innovation, lacks information and has not been motivated to learn more), persuasion (interested, and seeks information/detail), decision (decides whether to adopt or reject), implementation (employs the innovation and determines its usefulness; may search for more information on it), and confirmation (finalizes decision to continue using the innovation). During communication, the idea is rarely evaluated from a scientific standpoint - subjective perceptions dominate.

Moore contends that marketers should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. Begin by picking a target market in the early majority small enough that allows quickly becoming the dominant player. Once that target market is taken, it becomes the starting point for other focused initiatives. Relationship building is a key activity, and direct sales the application. The most difficult is making the transition between early adopters (visionaries) and early majority (pragmatists) - this is the chasm he refers to. Early adopters are willing to sacrifice for the advantage of being first, while the early majority waits until they know that technology actually offers productivity improvement. Early majority users are less likely than early adopters to be happy stitching together different pieces - thus, think not just the product but also support, training, etc. There is a lull in market development after the visionary market is saturated and pragmatists waiting until they can reference other pragmatists from their own industry - a 'Catch-22.' Moore's theory is only applicable for disruptive innovations.

The Technology Adoption Life Cycle Model has been the marketing model of choice for the high tech industry for quite some time. It’s the familiar bell shaped curve with beginner and early adopter phases to the left, followed by the early majority and late majority within 1 standard deviation of the mean, and finishing up with the laggard phase.

Unlike the recently reviewed book, Big Bang Disruption, which rejects this model, Author, Geoffrey Moore supports it, but with alterations. He indicates that there are chasms between each of the phases mentioned above with the largest and deepest being between the early adopter and early majority phases. It’s the period right before the product takes off and becomes mainstream.

The book explains how to recognize the onset of the chasm as well as how to cross it. The key to success is to replicate the D-Day approach – 1) Target a very specific market where you can dominate from the beginning. 2) Drive your competitors out of the niche 3) Use your solid base for broadening operations. The author explains the steps with a fair amount of detail to include helping define a product’s target market by creating an elevator statement. Step-by-step instructions are provided.

Crossing the Chasm is an interesting read. In its third edition, some will argue the continued relevance of the model. Regardless, the concepts appear sound and can help a company negotiate the perils of marketing and selling products throughout their life cycle.

--Nick McCormick, Author, "Lead Well and Prosper"

I work in tech. After hearing numerous quotes and ideas from it in meetings, I finally decided to read this book. I wanted to understand the fundamentals of high tech business development and the book did not disappoint. While there were portion of it that I couldn’t understand fully due to lack of experience, I could resonate with the rest of it. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that this book changed the way I looked at high-tech business.

In his book Moore provides dozens of successful high-tech marketing examples, his in-depth research on technology adoption models for high-tech consumers, and many new marketing strategies that are specifically built for bring high-tech products to larger markets. The goal of the book is to help you master the Technology Adoption Life cycle and accelerate your marketing efforts. The book is best read from front to back and can be done so comfortably in 2 - 3 days.

I had Geoff on my podcast, The Entrepreneurs Library, to give a deep dive on Crossing The Chasm. With Geoff’s experience he gives amazing insight on what it really takes to get any new, disruptive product out on the market into the hands of consumers. If you would like to hear a review from the author himself check out episode 156 at theELpodcast.com/books or on iTunes.

This book was recommended to me by John Chambers, Cisco's previous CEO for 20+ years. It is so absolutely informative for any one seeking to get a product into mainstream market you would be a fool not to read this text. It is wonderfully written with easy to understand concepts (my personal favorite was the D-Day analogy).

A fundamental book about stages of new product/category adoption.
The book describes indispensable model of new innovative product lifecycle.
Insights about how to solve the hardest growth-related problems are really helpful.

This is a great book and explains many personal experiences in moving minds or not as the case may be. Theoretical in parts but solid on converting experience into reality. Worth reading alongside a book called Solution selling the STRONGMAN process which has many practical ideas. There is also a video on you tube explaining the process.

Easy and fun to read guide through the typical life milestones of a successful-to-become B2B startup. You'll find the answers to complex questions, which should be answered correctly and timely, or risk survival...