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Crosing the Chasm & Inside the Tornado:
Must-Reads for High-Tech Marketers
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 HarperBusiness US$17.95 Cdn$27.50 quality paperback |
review by Gordon Graham
These two books are rightly called "must-reads" for anyone involved in high-tech marketing. In them, author Geoffrey Moore lays out a clear and compelling description for what he calls the Technology Adoption Life Cycle--or how people buy and absorb technology. Moore describes two types of innovations. | ||
Discontinuous innovations are more like buying a new PC loaded with Linux. Using it involves radical changes: acquiring and learning all new software, getting your peripherals working, setting up new provisions for support. Is it any wonder that Linux hasn't bridged the gap to the mainstream?
Moore's books concern exactly this situation. His model is essentially the bell curve you might find in any Marketing 101 class. The thin segments on the ends of the bell are labeled Early Adopters and Laggards; the thick segments in the middle are the Early Majority and Late Majority. Tacked to the front end of the curve is another segment, the Innovators.
Moore's key distinction is to pull each segment away from its neighbors to reveal the gaps between them. The biggest gap of all sits between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority, which he calls the Chasm.
"Crossing the chasm" is the challenge of moving a new technology from enthusiasts to the mass market. The chasm is where many fortunes have been wasted and many good technologies lost. No matter how much money is poured into marketing at this stage, no matter how hard people like us work, and no matter how excellent the campaigns, Moore says that no technology can cross the chasm without following a disciplined set of steps.
In a nutshell, he advises crossing the chasm one niche at a time, until your technology has enough proven benefits to start a "tornado" where everyone stampedes to your new standard, sharing the pain of changing their infrastructure across a whole industry.
 HarperBusiness US$17.95 Cdn$25.95 quality paperback |
The saga of Apple vs. Microsoft fits this model well.
Apple has always appealed to enthusiasts who "think different," while Microsoft has continuously copied Apple's innovations and carried them across the chasm to the mainstream. The corporate mainstream still resists the Mac for the one good reason that "everyone else uses Windows." |
There is much, much more in these books. One intriguing insight is that the marketing strategy that works best in one phase of the life cycle will fail in the next. Consider white papers: while many companies swear by them, they do appeal far more to technology enthusiasts than to those in the mass market.
Another insight gleaned from this book is that the same company may have different products at different phases in their life cycles at the same time. Marketing people, therefore, need the flexibility to apply one type of strategy to one product, then change gears and apply a completely contradictory strategy to another product.
These are not easy lessons to practice without support from higher management. If you read these titles and are converted, I highly recommend giving these books or the audiotape versions to your management as well.
This review appeared in Impact! the newsletter of the Marketing Communication SIG of the Society for Technical Communication in the Summer 2002 issue.
How to contact us
February 16, 2004
Review © 2002 by
Gordon Graham
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How to reach Gordon Graham Tel: (705) 842-2428 Eastern Fax: (705) 842-2429 Email: gordon@gordonandgordon.com |
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