Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

by Geoffrey A. Moore

But in fact, the revenue development that actually occurs looks more like a staircase than a hockey stick. That is, there is an initial period of rapid revenue growth, representing the development of the early market, followed by a period of slow to no growth (the chasm period), followed by a second phase of rapid growth, representing return on one’s initial mainstream market development. This staircase can continue indefinitely, with the flat periods representing slower growth due to transitioning into broader and broader mainstream segments, and the rapid rises representing the ability to capitalize on those efforts. As more and more segments are served, sooner or later the ups and downs begin to cancel each other out, and one can achieve the less bumpy results that Wall Street greatly prefers. (In fact, only the most successful high-tech companies have achieved such a state; most continue to fluctuate more dramatically than the financial community can understand, with the result that their stocks routinely take a vicious beating at the slightest indication of bad news.)