Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm

by Geoffrey Moore

"Everyone in the company should focus solely on crossing the chasm!! Not just marketing

Company unity is required before crossing the chasm.. Everyone must be aware of the stakes

This is not a time for gambling.. This is a time for taking careful steps towards the cross"

Crossing the Chasm is one of the most recommended books for aspiring technology entrepreneurs. Geoffrey Moore explains in this book his technology adoption life cycle, which states that a customer's willingness to adopt a new technology relates to the customer's attitude towards change in the area where the new technology will be used. Assuming people's attitude towards change follows a normal distribution (bell-curve) that goes from innovators to skeptics, Moore gives a detailed explanation on how this framework could be used to market to these different types of customers and become more effective at distributing your product. 

The book's main argument is that you must first close a number of clients from each customer group before advancing to get customers from the next group (from left to right). The biggest challenge is to transition between early adopters and the early majority (pragmatists). Moore explains that the attitude and expectations between these two groups are so different, that there is a chasm between them. Since the early majority represents a significant percentage of total market, and the transition between early to late majority is relatively smooth, Moore argues that crossing the chasm between early adopters and the early majority could be considered the single most important initiative to determine the long term success of a new technology that is entering a market. 

To offer some guidance, here are some ways in which you can determine how a customer should be categorized in this framework, and some comments about each customer group:

Innovators

• Innovators are attracted to disruptive technology and are always trying to be ahead of the competition by taking big risks in technology. 
• Winning the innovators is key!! They will use and promote your product! They will seek you out, so please them.
• Use innovators to get the product debugged!

Early Adopters

• Early adopters — the visionaries
• Early adopters like something when they see it, and believe in them even if they don't  completely understand it.
• Early adopters are motivated by a dream, and they are willing to try what it takes to get it done
• Early adopters are not looking for improvements, ellos quieren que quantum leaps
• Early adopters will work with new companies, untested products and will understand the dev process it takes to get it right for the potential of that quantum leap
• Easy to sell -- hard to please, because they are buying a dream
• Visionaries: in terms of communications, you don't find them, they typically find you!
• Visionaries: they can match your proposal with their existing needs

Early Majority

• Early majority — the pragmatists
• Early majority-- very similar to early adopters, but their decision making process is based on practicality
• They say things like "leading edge but not bleeding edge”
• Goal of pragmatist-- always looking for improvement, but for incremental, predictable progress
• Before installing a new product, they want to know how other people have fared with it
• Pragmatist are extremely loyal
• It is very tough to enter a new industry through a pragmatist 
• Value added resellers is a good way to get to this group... Get introduced by trusted sources
• Pragmatist want market competition and they want to buy from the leader
• You need to create brand awareness!!

Late Majority

• Late majority—  the conservatives
• Late majority -- need the product to be established before switching
• Conservatives are against discontinuous innovation
• Tradition > progress
• Conservatives fear high tech!
• Only buy commodities, when there is a clear market leader and everyone has it
• Conservatives want to every product they buy to be like their refrigerator.. How often do you think about your refrigerator?
• You need special marketing and sales pitch for conservatives: you will need a phone line for support and face to face responses, even though your plan is to "only have a digital presence”
• To maintain the mainstream markets you no longer have to be the most innovative in product development, you must simply be up to par with the competition and the mainstream markets will not leave you

Laggards

• Laggards—  the skeptics
• Laggards-- so reluctant is not even worth pursuing
• Fail to recognize the shortcomings of the status quo

Some of the key concepts I learned from this book are:

• Visionaries want to hear "state of the art", pragmatists want to hear "industry standard"
• Early majority is willing to adapt, late majority is waiting for you to adapt
• Early majority wants evolution, not revolution
• Each new client must become a new referenceable source for future clients. 
• You can’t attack the pragmatists without a defined strategy
• Whole Product Concept
• • Generic product — minimum product to get it shipped
  • Expected product —  set of minimal things needed to achieve buying objective
  • Augmented product — the maximum set of things that will fully achieve buying objective
  • Potential product — product's room for growth
• You sell to innovators with the generic product, you sell to early adopters  with the expected product, you sell to early majority with augmented product. 
• Pragmatists evaluate and buy whole products!
• Every additional new target customer will put additional new demands on the whole product
• You should focus early on a Product Centric approach (for innovators) — then switch to Market Centric approach (for early majority).

Here is a chapter-by-chapter summary of the lessons I learned from the book - link