Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
This third edition brings Moore’s classic work up to date with dozens of new examples of successes and failures, new strategies for marketing in the digital world, and Moore’s most current insights and findings. He also includes two new appendices, the first connecting the ideas in Crossing the Chasm to work subsequently published in his Inside the Tornado, and the second presenting his recent groundbreaking work for technology adoption models for high-tech consumer markets.
From the Back Cover
“Crossing the Chasm truly addresses the subtleties of high-tech marketing. We have embraced many of the concepts in the book and it has become a ‘bestseller’ with Unisys.”
– James A. Unruh, CEO, Unisys
“Crossing the Chasm is no longer just the name of a great book – it has become a very effective management process. In venture capital, chasm management is a widely used boardroom tool for emerging technology companies. It works!”
– Joe Schoendorf, executive partner, Accel Partners
“Crossing the Chasm has contributed more to the art and science of high-tech marketing than any other book in the last decade. If you are not one of the thousands of businesses and universities incorporating the chasm insight into your operations, you have to be worried about your future.”
– Tom Kendra, vice president, Worldwide Data Management Sales, IBM Software Group
Amazon Customer –
I loved this book – it’s not boring or slow paced. It’s an excellent read for anyone trying to bring out a new technology or working at a technology company. I worked at a small software company and this book was recommended by a coworker from his previous role at a different software company. It was really eye opening to me and helpful. The author has excellent insights (I love his pioneer / settler reference). It really explains the lifecycle and why you may hit a wall after initial success and how to push through and overcome. I highly recommend this book.
Fred Cheyunski –
This book provides a lucid, updated account about what is involved in successfully introducing and getting mainstream acceptance of disruptive innovations in high tech related businesses that can also be applied more broadly as well (e.g. in other industries, non-profits).I first became aware of Moore’s book “Living on the Fault Line” (see my review of this and “Escape Velocity”) when at CSC Consulting where I also started to hear about his concepts such as the “Technology Adoption Life Cycle.” Given increased recent interest in such topics, it was heartening to discover that Moore had issued a new edition of his initial book which drew me to examine this version. and the book for the first time.The book consists of two parts. Part I is about “Discovering the Chasm” the need to gain support for a disruptive innovation vs. just expecting The Field of Dreams (if you build it they will come) can be realized. Part II is about Crossing the Chasm using an analogy to the WWII D-Day invasion where the group has to: target the point of attack, assemble the invasion force, define the battle, and launch the invasion. A conclusion discusses the financial, organizational and R&D aspects of approaching and leaving the chasm behind. He treats how different stakeholders are involved and mobilized (see my review of
Ed Barton –
The book is a dense read, but a critical one. A lot of companies go over the cliff instead of crossing the chasm because they fail to mainstream their products. This challenge is addressed here with a targeted market approach that the author compares to D-Day. The book gets tactical – and sometimes difficult to read – but will give you a blueprint for action as you develop your products and markets.
John Gibbs –
The point of greatest peril in the development of a high-tech market lies in making the transition from an “early market” dominated by a few visionary customers to a “mainstream market” dominated by a large block of customers who are predominantly pragmatists in orientation, according to Geoffrey Moore in the third edition of this book. The gap between early and mainstream markets is what the author refers to as the “chasm”, and many entrepreneurial businesses have fallen into it.The chasm arises because innovators and early adopters of a new high-tech market have a fundamentally different outlook from that held by mainstream customers. Innovators are the first to try a new technology. They are the enthusiasts who don’t care about manuals or user-friendliness or even practical benefits; all they care about is trying out something interesting and different. Visionary early adopters start to care about a new product when they can see that it enables a strategic leap forward, and they tend to be willing to pay for the strategic advantages which they hope the product will bring to them.Mainstream purchasers, on the other hand, want to see that the product is working well and providing productivity improvements for other people like themselves, before they are willing to buy. The problem is that only other mainstream purchasers are “people like themselves”, as references from visionary early adopters tend to be suspect. Thus a product which does well with innovators and early adopters can fall into the chasm because no mainstream purchasers are willing to be the first “people like themselves” to take it on.The book, which goes on to describe the steps which need to be taken to cross the chasm, has become a classic since the first edition was published in 1991, but the content has been rewritten in the latest edition to bring it right up to date. The real question is whether, in the current environment of disruptive technologies, the principles outlined in the book continue to apply. Downes and Nunes in their book
Juan José Díaz Tello –
A must
Excelente libro
Vivek Slaria –
Must read for any tech product entrepreneur
Read it to change the way you look at product marketing
André Ferraz da Costa –
Best marketing book ever read
This is by far the best book about marketing and populations strategy you will ever seen. Continuing the work of Everett Rogers and Roger McKenna, the legends.
Jan Wall –
As Valuable Today As It Was years Ago
There is a general tendency to discount books and articles as they age. This is particularly true in high technology. This book, however, is a classic. Its lessons are just as valuable today as they were when the book was first published. The author has taken pains to update his examples with recent market developments and I applaud him for that. But the underlying truths, the insights that are not at all obvious, are all the more valuable because they are not obvious and are instrumental in informing management’s decisions. In 2017 I would recommend this book to all senior managers and stakeholders in both B2B and B2C companies.
Jon Busby –
Well worth a read for new and innovating businesses alike.
Mind blowing book – a must read for any SaaS company – or in fact any company looking at developing a disruptive product.I actually read this as a result of it being referenced in another book (unfortunately I can’t remember which one!), but my word this is worth the purchase. Having actually run a fairly “groundbreaking” product (partnermarketing.com) for the last 5 years – a lot of this book speaks to the challenges we’ve faced – and it was great to see that we’ve overcome them in ways Geoffrey described (with a lot of new ideas thrown in too).Well worth a read if you run any business looking to innovate