Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers

by Geoffrey A. Moore

Recap: Tips on Whole Product Management 1. Use the doughnut diagram to define—and then to communicate—the whole product. Shade in all the areas for which you intend your company to take primary responsibility. The remaining areas must be filled either by the customer or by partners or allies. 2. Review the whole product to ensure it has been reduced to its minimal set. This is the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid). It is hard enough to manage a whole product without burdening it with unnecessary bells and whistles. 3. Review the whole product from each participant’s point of view. Make sure each vendor wins, and that no vendor gets an unfair share of the pie. Inequities here, particularly when they favor you, will instantly defeat the whole product effort—companies are naturally suspicious of each other anyway, and given any encouragement, will interpret your entire scheme as a rip-off. 4. Develop the whole product relationships slowly, working from existing instances of cooperation toward a more formalized program. Do not try to institutionalize cooperation in advance of credible examples that everyone can benefit from it—not the least of whom should be the customers. Also, do not recruit directly competing partners to serve the same need in the same segment—this will only discourage them from making a full commitment to your program. 5. With large partners, try to work from the bottom up; with small ones, from the top down. The goal in either case is to ...