crossing the chasm - marketing and selling high-tech products to mainstream customers

[...]... competitors who would never be granted such grace It should come as no surprise that the history of these flagship products conforms to the High-Tech Marketing Model In truth, the model was essentially derived from an abstraction of these histories And so high-tech marketing, as we enter the next millennium, keeps before it the example of these companies and the abstraction of the High-Tech Marketing. .. Discovering the Chasm The real news, however, is not the two cracks in the bell curve, the one between the innovators and the early adopters, the other between the early and late majority No, the real news is the deep and dividing chasm that separates the early adopters from the early majority This is by far the most formidable and unforgiving transition in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, and it is all the. .. expectations rather than modest ones, and spent heavily in expansion projects rather than husbanding resources Preface to the Revised Edition 19 All this is the result of high-tech marketing illusion the belief induced by the High-Tech Marketing Model that new markets unfold in a continuous and smooth way In order to avoid the perils of the chasm, we need to achieve a new state -high-tech marketing enlightenment—by... only natural to cling to the past when the past represents so much of what we have strived to achieve This is the key to Crossing the Chasm The chasm represents the gulf between two distinct marketplaces for technology products the first, an early market dominated by early adopters and insiders who are quick to appreciate the nature and benefits of the new development, and the second a mainstream market... Model This profile, is in turn, the very foundation of the High-Tech Marketing Model That model says that the way to develop a high-tech market is to work the curve left to right, focusing first on the innovators, growing that market, then moving on to the early adopters, growing that market, and so on, to the early majority, late majority, and even to the laggards In this effort, companies must use each... application, the one thing that best captures the power and value of the new product If the marketing effort is unable to find that compelling application, then market development stalls with the innovators, and the future of the product falls through the crack The Other Crack There is another crack in the bell curve, of approximately equal magnitude, that falls between the early majority and the late... symbolizes the dissociation between the two groups—that is, the difficulty any group will have in accepting a new product if it is presented in the same way as it was to the group to its immediate left Each of these gaps represents an opportunity for marketing to lose momentum, to miss the transition to the next segment, thereby never to gain the promised land of profit-margin leadership in the middle of the. .. going to be the driving force -and most organizations insist this is their goal—then its principles must be accessible to all the players, and not, as is sometimes the case, be reserved to an elect few who have managed to penetrate its mysteries Crossing the Chasm, therefore, is written for the entire high-tech community—for everyone who is a stakeholder in the venture, engineers as well as marketeers, and. .. Apple and Microsoft keeping in close touch with their customers and the other participants that make up the PC marketplace The standard we tried to set at RMI was one of education not promotion, the goal being to communicate rather than to manipulate, the mechanism being dialogue, not monologue The fundamental requirement for the ongoing, interoperability needed to sustain high tech is accurate and honest... everywhere from Inc and High Technology to Time magazine to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and among other things, were able to ride that wave of enthusiasm to take their companies public Today, however, AI has been relegated to the trash heap Despite the fact that it was and is—a very hot technology, and that it garnered strong sup- High-Tech Marketing Enlightenment 17 port from the early adopters, . in other cases, there’s been a little force- fitting, and I want to beg your indulgence up front. The world has changed. The high-tech community is now crossing the chasm intentionally rather. based on the tendency of pragmatic people to adopt new tech- viii Preface to the Revised Edition nology when they see other people like them doing the same. This causes them to hang together as. both the customer and the vendor, continually changing products and services challenge their institution’s ability to absorb and make use of the new elements. What can marketing do to buffer these