For a book on high tech that was first published nearly two decades ago to feel so relevant today is a testament to the ideas and writing of Geoffrey Moore. Its frankly pretty amazing how Moore seems like he's discussing the various success and failures of the social networks and their adoption issues (friendster, myspace, and facebook).

The genius of this book is not the discussion of how technology adoption follows a normal distribution. The genius is in Moore's research around how to increase your chances for taking a technology or idea from its early nascent days to mainstream success. The key as Moore lays it out is in the attitudinal differences between members of the Early Adopters and the Early Majority. The early adopters he argues are typically Technologists and Visionaries, and can see the possibilities of what a technology represents. They are more willing to play with immature technologies (in the case of Technologists, it's a geek thing we wouldn't understand, in the case of visionaries, it's about pushing what's possible further along). In order to continue to grow the business beyond this early set of customer you have to prove your value to the pragmatists that make up the Early Majority who want to go with a proven leader. This is the chasm, to shift from the Early Adopters to the Early Majority if you will. This is where a great number of companies falter and don't last.

The key per Moore, and frankly it jives really well with my admittedly anecdotal experience, is to focus on a small segment, while keeping your end goal in mind. To do this, you have to pick the right segment to focus your efforts on in order to build out the product. Moore argues that in order to know whether your segment is the right size or is truly a segment, you have to a small enough community that can generate word of mouth completely on its own. To me this is sound advice no matter the truth of whether technology adoption occurs this way or not, as it forces companies to focus on a relatively small group of customers with common concerns, which in and of itself is a great thing. It means that the service/product is going to get developed completely for a group of people instead of trying to be all things to all people.

Moore has a great analogy, to describe this strategy. He calls it D-Day. Your end goal is the liberation of Europe. In order to do this, you need first to get a foothold in Europe. To do this you must gather all of your resources and position them to come out of the early adopter market (England) and send them onto a focused point (Normandy) in a rapid manner in order to cross the chasm (English Channel), and ultimately to success (mass market appeal).

There are tons of other great insights in this book (from understanding the need for a larger ecosystem of companies to define a value chain, to positioning yourself relative to your competition).

Complete review of this and other interesting non-fiction can be found at www.cosmicwanderlust.com

It is amazing how this book describes, through real examples, they key role that the marketing plays in the massive adoption of a technology. Although most of the ideas should be known by most of the technological marketing people, this book must be a reference for newcomers.

While I found the first 20 or so pages of this book helpful in a general sense, the author made too many references to obsolete or no long existant software companies. Result: If you weren't in high tech in the 90's you might not get much from the examples.

Nutshell review - An interesting concept and well written book describing how companies need to make the jump from the early adopters of their products to main-stream users in order to truly reap the rewards and succeed. However, as is often the case with these types of books, it could have been written in fewer pages. Worth reading nonetheless.

I've bought copies of Crossing the Chasm for two customers and one associate. I guess that means I'm impressed.

Few books, IMHO, can have a profound "life altering" effect on a business. E-Myth Revisited was one. This is another. It provides a very well thought out and persuasive strategy for transitioning a high-tech product from a geek market into the mainstream.

A must read if you have a highly advanced product and are struggling to get traction in the market place.