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

by Geoffrey A. Moore

From a market development perspective laggards are generally regarded as not worth pursuing on any other basis.

when promoters of high-tech products try to make the transition from a market base made up of visionary early adopters to penetrate the next adoption segment, the pragmatist early majority, they are effectively operating without a reference base and without a support base within a market that is highly reference oriented and highly support oriented.

If two people buy the same product for the same reason but have no way they could reference each other, they are not part of the same market.

the goal of visionaries is to take a quantum leap forward, the goal of pragmatists is to make a percentage improvement—incremental, measurable, predictable progress.

Pragmatists want to buy from proven market leaders because they know that third parties will design supporting products around a market-leading product.