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

by Geoffrey A. Moore

market of visionaries become increasingly saturated (with big-ticket products this can be after as few as three to five contracts), and with the mainstream market of pragmatists nowhere near the comfort level they need in order to buy, there is simply an insufficient marketplace of available dollars to sustain the firm. Having flirted with going cash-flow positive (especially during the months following one of the early market big orders), the trend is now reversed, and the enterprise is accelerating into increasingly negative cash flow. Worse still, mainstream competitors, who up to this time had paid no attention to the fledgling entry into their market, now have caught sight of a new target, experienced one or two major losses, and set their sales forces in motion to counterattack.