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

by Geoffrey A. Moore

By way of parting, let us look back over the ground we have covered over the course of this book. We began by isolating a fundamental flaw in the prevailing High-Tech Marketing Model—the notion that rapid mainstream market growth could follow continuously on the heels of early market success. By analyzing the characteristics of visionaries and pragmatists, we were able to see that a far more normal development would be a chasm period of little to no growth. This period was identified as perilous indeed, giving companies every incentive to pass through it as rapidly as possible. Taking such rapid passage as our charter, we then embarked on setting forth a strategy and set of tactics for accomplishing it. The fundamental strategic principle was to launch a D-Day type of invasion, one focused on a highly specific target segment within a mainstream marketplace. The tactics for implementing that invasion were then set out in four clusters. To begin with, we had to target the point of attack, which meant isolating our target customers and their compelling reason to buy. Then we had to assemble the invasion force, constructed around the whole product and the partners and allies needed to make it a reality. The next step was to define the battle, by creating our competition and positioning ourselves, in that context, as being easy to buy. Finally, we had to launch the invasion, selecting our intended distribution channel and setting our pricing to give us motivational leverage ove...