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Summary: Pure High-Tech marketing
Review: 'Crossing the Chasm' and 'Inside the Tornado' explain high-tech marketing strategies and product/technology life cycle. In the 90s, some of the most successful high-tech companies could be distinguished by their marketing strategies. Standard approach to marketing might be fine for other industries, but it has less chance of succeeding in high-tech industry. 'Crossing the Chasm' refers to product's acceptance by mass market. Typical product adaptation cycle would go through various phases that include: innovators (very narrow market), early adopters, (much larger than innovators, but still nothing major), early majority (this is where you want your product to get), late majority (still huge market), and laggards. Now, in high-tech world, there is a chasm between early adopters and early majority. It takes different approach to cross that chasm and get accepted by early majority.
Once you are on the other side of the chasm, be prepare for the 'tornado' phase. Your product/technology will take off with enormous power driven by huge market. You don't want to be at the point where market demand surpasses your supply. At this point your company can grow at hyper growth rate and gigantic revenues can be generated. We have seen this before so many times and some of the examples (Dell, MS, Oracle, Apple, etc...) are known to everybody.
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Summary: An IT consultant must !
Review: Almost every thing have been said and written about these 2 books ("Crossing the chasm" and "Inside the tornado"). These are really about the best business books ever, but I would like to add one point :This book is compulsory reading for IT consultants and system integrators, without it, you will never understand how to manage your technology "partners" (or why they treat you so poorly !). Once you will have read it, you will understand their goal, their lifecycle and your role in that game. If you deal with the SAP, Siebel and Oracle of the world (the gorrilas), you will start to decipher their strategy.
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Summary: Marketing and business strengths, but "people" holes
Review: Beyond the previous Chasm book, there's a great deal of additional depth in how to make the transition with your business to get your products out to a wider range of people. He also introduced the idea of companies that effectively "live" in one part of the adoption phase or another, not dominating it, but rather living off the share that the market implicitly either wants to give to another competitor to keep a diverse environment or because they're the low-cost clone alternative. Like another reviewer, I found the gorilla / chimp / monkey metaphor a bit much, though primarily because the "gorilla company" metaphor is used in a slightly different way in the real world. My biggest concern was with the people issues; there's a lot of discussion around how to transition your company from one stage to another and how that will affect the various roles, rewards the people in those roles should expect, and even the type of work those people should be doing. I don't think -- especially for companies as people-based as technology companies -- he spends enough time talking about how you handle those issues, set expectations, and actually lead your company through these sorts of changes. Academically, I could see how he was saying to transform the company over time. Practically, though, I couldn't see how some of his messages could be delivered well. Especially to the engineers working on products.
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Summary: Two Invaluable Guides to E-Commerce
Review: Crossing the Chasm (1991) and Inside the Tornado (1995) are most valuable when read in combination. Chasm "is unabashedly about and for marketing within high tech enterprises." It was written for the entire high tech community "to open up the marketing decision making during this [crossing] period so that everyone on the management team can participate in the marketing process." In Chasm, Moore isolates and then corrects what he describes as a "fundamental flaw in the prevailing high-tech marketing model": the notion that rapid mainstream growth could follow continuously on the heels of early market success. In his subsequent book, Inside the Tornado, Moore's use of the "tornado" metaphor correctly suggests that turbulence of unprecedented magnitude has occurred within the global marketplace which the WWW and the Internet have created. Moreover, such turbulence is certain to intensify. Which companies will survive? Why? I have only one (minor) quarrel with the way these two books have been promoted. True, they provide great insights into marketing within the high technology industry. However, in my opinion, all e-commerce (and especially B2B) will be centrally involved in that industry. Moreover, the marketing strategies suggested are relevant to virtually (no pun intended) any organization -- regardless of size or nature -- which seeks to create or increase demand for what it sells...whatever that may be. I consider both books "must reading."ÿ
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Summary: More Valuable Now Than Ever Before
Review: Crossing the Chasm (1991) and Inside the Tornado (1995) should be read in combination. Having just re-read both, I consider them even more valuable now than when they were first published. Chasm "is unabashedly about and for marketing within high-tech enterprises." It was written for the entire high tech community "to open up the marketing decision making during this [crossing] period so that everyone on the management team can participate in the marketing process." In Chasm, Moore isolates and then corrects what he describes as a "fundamental flaw in the prevailing high-tech marketing model": the notion that rapid mainstream growth could follow continuously on the heels of early market success. In his subsequent book, Inside the Tornado, Moore's use of the "tornado" metaphor correctly suggests that turbulence of unprecedented magnitude has occurred within the global marketplace which the WWW and the Internet have created. Moreover, such turbulence is certain to intensify. Which companies will survive? Why? I have only one (minor) quarrel with the way these two books have been promoted. True, they provide great insights into marketing within the high technology industry. However, in my opinion, all e-commerce (especially B2B and, even more importantly, B2B2C) will be centrally involved in that industry. Moreover, the marketing strategies suggested are relevant to virtually (no pun intended) any organization -- regardless of size or nature -- which seeks to create or increase demand for what it sells...whatever that may be. I consider both books "must reading." Those who share my high regard for one or both are strongly urged to read Moore's more recent business classic, Living on the Fault Line.
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Summary: Tech Marketing Insight
Review: Ever wonder why so many innovative products never have the commercial success that the innovation deserves? "Inside the Tornado" is an invaluable resource for high tech marketing. The basic philosophy behind the book is for high tech marketers to master the use product niches and specialization in order to transcend high tech products forward to mass-market acceptance by dissecting the product adoption lifecycle. A great read for marketers and techies interested in marketing their own innovations.
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Summary: Nothing is new here! Try the original books.
Review: I consider this book a fraud. The key element, "The Tornado" which the author claims to be a new concept is a pale copy of early works of Peter Drucker(e.g."Age of Discontinuity" [1978])
and the excelent book by Richard Foster "Innovation - The attacker's Advantage" [1986].
Besides, two chapters seems like low quality summaries of Al Ries & Jack Trout's "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind" [1985] and Michael Porter's "Competitive Advantage : Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance" [1985]
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Summary: Dissecting the Technology Adoption Life Cycle
Review: I found Moore's descriptions of the phases of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC) very useful: o Early Market: time of great excitement when customers are technology enthusiasts o Chasm: early-market interest wanes o Bowling Alley: Niche-based adoption in advance of general marketplace o Tornado: mass-market adoption o Main Street: aftermarket development o End of Life: leaders are supplanted by new paradigms/technology The individual chapters on The Bowling Alley, Inside the Tornado, and On Main Street were full of company examples and useful advice and warnings. The last chapter on Organization Leadership which described the types of recruiting and management talent appropriate for each stage of the TALC contains very valuable advice. However, I found the gorilla, monkey and chimp metaphors silly and tedious (I had trouble remembering which animal symbolized what). Surely Moore could have found a more descriptive way of indicating the strengths and strategies of the competitors during each of the phases of the TALC. Primates aside, I will keep this book and add it to my library of professional marketing reference sources. It's worth picking up from time to time to re-read specific sections to refresh your memory. When you're in the "tornado" you won't have time for this kind of reading, so read it now!
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Summary: A very interesting view of the marketplace
Review: I liked reading this book. I did not read his previous "chasm" book but it sounds like I don't need to. The author says that the first few chapters of this book are a rehash of the previous book. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars because after reading 80% of it I just stopped. I felt like the point was made and I didn't need to hear any more. This is kind of the feeling I get when I read Tom Peters as well.
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Summary: insightful marketing framework for an engineer
Review: I'm a systems engineer and found the framework developed in the book useful in understanding where different high-tech companies are in their respective product life-cycles. Perhaps, this is elementary knowledge for marketing folks.
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