Or, to put this in investment terms, How long will it take before I can achieve a reasonably predictable ROI from an acceptably large mainstream market? The simple answer to this question is, as long as it takes to create and install a sustainable whole product. The chasm model asserts that no mainstream market can occur until the whole product is in place. A reasonable corollary, I believe, is that once the whole product is in place—in other words, has become institutionalized—the market will develop quickly—normally, although not necessarily, around the company that drove and led the whole
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