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What it argues
Crossing the Chasm is Geoffrey Moore's analysis of why so many technology companies succeed with early adopters and then stall before reaching mainstream customers. The technology adoption lifecycle — Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards — was already a familiar framework when Moore published the first edition in 1991, but he identified something the original model missed: there is a dangerous discontinuity, a "chasm," between Early Adopters and the Early Majority, and falling into it has killed more promising technology companies than bad products or weak execution.
Early Adopters are visionaries. They buy new technology for competitive advantage, tolerate bugs and incompleteness, and don't need the product to fit neatly into an existing category. The Early Majority — the mainstream buyers who represent the bulk of the market — are pragmatists. They want proven solutions, references from similar buyers, complete ecosystems, and reduced risk. The visionary and the pragmatist are so different in their buying psychology that a company's success with one group can actually make the other group more cautious.
What it gets right
- 1.
There is a dangerous gap — the chasm — between Early Adopters (visionaries) and the Early Majority (pragmatists) that stops most technology companies before they reach mainstream markets.
- 2.
Visionaries and pragmatists buy so differently that success with one group can make the other group more wary, not more confident.
- 3.
To cross the chasm, concentrate all resources on a single beachhead: one specific market segment with a specific problem you can solve completely.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Geoffrey A. Moore is a Silicon Valley–based author, speaker, and venture partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. He spent his early career at Regis McKenna Inc. before founding several consulting firms focused on technology marketing strategy. Crossing the Chasm, first published in 1991 and revised multiple times, made him one of the most influential voices in technology marketing. He has written six books, including Inside the Tornado and Escape Velocity, which extend the technology adoption framework to later stages of market development.
