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

by Geoffrey A. Moore

One of the most useful marketing constructs in all of high-tech marketing is the concept of a whole product,

There is a gap between the marketing promise made to the customer—the compelling value proposition—and the ability of the shipped product to fulfill that promise.

For that gap to be overcome, the product must be augmented by a variety of services and ancillary products to become the whole product.

Generic product:

what is shipped in the box and what is covered by the purchasing contract.

Expected product:

For example, when you buy a tablet, you need to have either a Wi-Fi network at home or a cellular connection for it to work, but either one is likely to have to be purchased separately.

The product and it's ecosystem to support the offering, required to deliver the value expressed to the customer and meet expectations at a minimum

Augmented product:

In the case of a tablet, this would include email, a browser, a calendar, a personal directory, a search engine, and an app store, for example.

Extra bells and whistles that customers might want as part of their experience, probably derived from their experience with similar product. These are additional blocks that either you build or the community builds that enhance the experience of your product

Potential product:

the product’s room for growth as more and more ancillary products come on the market and as customer-specific enhancements to the system are made.

the marketing battle initially takes place at the level of the generic product—

for the early market.

as marketplaces develop, as we enter the mainstream market, products in the center become more and more alike, and the battle shif...

the rest of the whole product.

In every case, there is a risk that they are preferring an inferior product—if you look only at the generic product. But in every case, they are preferring the superior product if you look at the whole product.

Whole product as a barrier to entry, a switching cost the customer might not make for a superior core product that isn't supported by an ecosystem, in other words a superior generic product that is not preferred to the existing whole product. Superior generics either build out ease of integration with ecosystem or shift the landscape

To net this out: Pragmatists evaluate and buy whole products.

The single most important difference between early markets and mainstream markets is that the former are willing to take responsibility for piecing together the whole product (in return for getting a jump on their competition), whereas the latter are not.

A good generic product is a great asset in this battle, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of victory.

Exactly why an inferior product, in the eyes of the experts, can win the mainstream if it's a stronger whole product

Oracle did not have the best product when the market standardized on it. What Oracle offered instead was the best case for a viable whole product—

In short, winning the whole product battle means winning the war.

perception contributes to that reality, looking like you are winning the whole product battle is a key weapon to winning the war.

By actions, meeting milestones, satisfying new customers, growing to meet customer adoption needs, building strong support systems...when people see the foundations, that's the perception, not a makeshift high rise with no foundation that's really knocked over. What are the foundations of your whole product offering and how well you develop them?

focus should be on the minimum commitment to whole product needed to cross the chasm.

To work out how much whole product this is, you only need a simplified version of the whole model:

In the simplified model there are only two categories: 1) what we ship and 2) whatever else the customers need in order to achieve their compelling reason to buy.

By solving the whole product equation for any given set of target customers, high tech has overcome its single greatest obstacle to market development.

Now, let’s analyze this scenario in light of its implied whole product commitments.

Implied, as in you probably know what your product life cycle looks like and you inherently have identified the whole product. Cut out your general product and the rest is the whole product

The wholesaler works with a freelance designer who is able to scan David’s drawing and convert it into a CAD file.

Not the genteel product, but a necessary part of the whole product ecosystem. No rendering, then nothing to print. No designer and wholeseller, then no product.

implication is that there is an industry-standard file format for such designs,

The wholesaler works with David to select an appropriate material and finish for the fabricated fixture.

Here the assumption is that there preexists a fabrication material that can meet the demanding standards of David and his client.

Relation of general product to the industry market customer needs and standards

If the client still wants to tweak it some more, this can be readily done by updating the file and printing it out again.

This assumes that the materials can be recycled or are cheap enough to discard.

Again, assumption about process compatibility with the customer segment scenario...helps highlight shortcomings or barriers to technology adoption for a given segment as well as business model limitations

It also assumes that the printing can be done quickly enough that there is not a perennial backlog of p...

By adjusting the parameters in the file, fixtures of different scales can be produced, all sharing the same design.

This assumes that the printer has few limitations on the size of the objects it can produce.

the total sum of products and services needed in order to get the

desired benefit changes any time you change the value proposition.

This is exactly why focus is key! The whole product demands exceed capacity of new company, even if the generic product is identical!

each opportunity has very real support costs.

what is the responsibility of the 3-D printer hardware vendor—and specifically of the product manager who has the 3-D printer as his responsibility—for seeing that this whole product is in fact delivered?

it has to do with marketing success.

Marketing here meaning finding the most compelling customer segment that supports the whole product, rather than going after a market and hoping it works

by thinking through your customer’s problems—and solutions—in their entirety, you can define—and work to ensure that the customer gets—the whole product.

The second part is choosing the partners, suppliers, and distributors that create a support ecosystem around your generic product to realize an expected product for the mainstream market, either by adapting to existing ecosystem or creating your own depending on your strategy and costs

But while you are crossing the chasm, there is no hope of any external support that is not specifically recruited by you for this purpose.

The first rule is you have to leverage a point of disruption, one that puts the incumbent a bit back on its heels.

So there was a 10x value proposition potentially in play—arguably the single most pragmatic definition of a disruptive innovation.

For more, see only the paranoid survive by grove

The second rule is, remember the fish-to-pond ratio principle from the prior chapter, and target a market segment that is big enough to matter, small enough to lead, and a good fit with your crown jewels.

Now we come to the third rule, the one this chapter is about: Surround your disruptive core product,

with a whole product that solves for the target customer’s problem end to end.

The way you design a whole product is to work backward from the target customer’s use case, filling

in the blanks as you go along, either with new R&D, an acquisition, a partnership, or an alliance.