Crossing the Chasm

by Geoffrey A. Moore

Book Overview

In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore, the world's leading high-tech and communications guru, throws out old marketing ideas to clear space for the special realities of the high-tech market. Based on... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060517123
• ISBN13: 9780060517120
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: HarperBusiness
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A classic must-read for anybody involved in product strategy for high technology.

This is a classic must-read for all people involved in product strategy for high-technology. Published in 1991 and updated in 1999, it introduced a very innovative way of how technology is adopted by different segments in the market. The book goes beyond theoretical models and really offers almost hands-on, very systematic (!) approach on what the optimal steps are to market and sell your technology, and this depending on where your product is in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. If you haven't read it yet, don't hesitate any longer. Seriously. If you're short of time (hey - the book is only about 200 pages...) then I suggest you read the summary (free download, google it or check my blog for the link) from the nice people at Parker Hill Technology - but you will miss out on a great read by doing so.

How to get the public to love your high-tech product

This serious, detailed book offers a nonconventional marketing approach for high-tech promoters and investors. Consultant Geoffrey Moore has thought long and hard about how to market new technology, so the book sometimes reads like an intriguing personal essay. He makes an elaborate case about different technology users, citing product examples to explain why each consumer matters at certain stages in product marketing. At times, his presentation get a little strained, such as when he tries to describe how consumer groups "reference" each other or how marketers must engage in "informed intuition." Moore devised his own explanations for the successes and failures of different high-tech marketing tactics, so your level of agreement depends on how much of his detailed theory fits your marketing concerns. We find substantial interest and value in this exploration of high-tech marketing.

A classic in business analysis

This book works best when read in combination with Inside the Tornado. These two books have also been updated and integrated into Moore's latest, Living on the Fault Line. Crossing the Chasm, like the other books, is about and for marketing within high-tech enterprises. Moore's view is that high tech products require marketing strategies that differ from those in other industries. The "chasm" is the gap between sales to technically literate buyers and mainstream buyers. Moore's book provides well thought out strategies for bridging this gap. Moore disputes the prevailing view that rapid mainstream growth can follow continuously from early market success. Quite different strategies are needed and Moore provides them, illustrated by examples of companies and products that have successfully crossed the chasm. This is well worth reading, though if you read only one book by Moore, make it his latest, Living on the Fault Line.

Essential for anyone in IT marketing

The first section sets out the 'chasm' that IT products have to cross -- from early adopters to a mass audience. Very well written, useful, clearly informed by ground-level experience.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!

Two Immensely Helpful Companions

Crossing the Chasm (1991) and Inside the Tornado (1995) aremost valuable when read in combination. Chasm "is unabashedly aboutand for marketing within high-tech enterprises." It was written forthe entire high tech community "to open up the marketing decision making during this [crossing] period so that everyone on the management team can participate in the marketing process." In Chasm, Moore isolates and then corrects what he describes as a "fundamental flaw in the prevailing high-tech marketing model": the notion that rapid mainstream growth could follow continuously on the heels of early market success. 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."