Rating: 
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.
Rating:
Summary: Two Immensely Helpful Companions
Review: Crossing the Chasm (1991) and Inside the Tornado (1995) aremost valuable when read in combination. Chasm "is unabashedly aboutand for marketing within high-tech enterprises." It was written forthe 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."
Rating: 
Summary: a high tech business classic
Review: Let's face it -- 80% of business books are pure garbage. This is one of the gems. One that should sit on your office bookshelf. Moore came up with an interesting take on how high tech businesses must move from early adopters to the mainstream and the challenges involved.
Rating:
Summary: Helpful Revision of a High-Tech Marketing Classic
Review: Crossing the Chasm deserves more than five stars for putting "a vocabulary to a market development problem that has given untold grief to any number of high-tech enterprises." Crossing the Chasm is the most influential book about high technology in the last 10 years. When I meet with CEOs of the most successful high technology firms, this is the book that they always bring up. What most people do not realize is that Geoffrey Moore did an excellent update of the book in a revised edition in 1999. If you liked the original, you will like the revision even more. It contains many better and more up-top-date examples, and explores several new ways that companies have crossed the chasm that he had not yet observed in 1991 when the original came out (such as "piggybacking," the way that Lotus 1-2-3 built from VisiCalc's initial success). If you plan to work or invest in any high technology companies, you owe it to yourself to read and understand this book. The understanding won't be hard, because the material is clear and well articulated. The book's focus is on a well-known psychological trait (referred to as Social Proof in Influence by Robert Cialdini). There is a potential delay in people using new things "based on a tendency of pragmatic people to adopt new technology when they see other people like them doing the same." As a result, companies must concentrate on cracking the right initial markets in a segmented way to get lots of references and a bandwagon effect going. One market segment will often influence the next one. Crossing the Chasm is all about how to select and attack the right segments. Many companies fail because innovators and early adopters are very interested in new technology and opportunities to create setrategic breakthroughs based on technology. As a result, these customers are not very demanding how easy it is to use the new technology. To cross the chasm, these companies must primarily appeal to the "Early Majority" of pragmatists who want the whole solution to work without having to be assembled by them and to enhance their productivity right away. If you wait too long to commercialize the product or service in this way, you will see your sales shrivel after a fast start with the innovators and early adopters. The next group you must appeal to are the Late Majority, who want to wait until you are the new standard and these people are very price sensitive. Many U.S. high technology companies also fail to make the transitions needed to satisfy this large part of the market (usually one-third of demand). The final group is technology adverse, and simply hopes you will go away (the Laggards). The book describes its principles in terms of D-Day. While that metaphor is apt, I wonder how well people under 35 know D-Day. In the next revision, I suggest that Desert Storm or some more recent metaphor be exchanged for this one. The book's key weakness is that it tries to homogenize high technology markets too much. Rather than present this segmentation as immutable, it would have been a good idea to provide ways to test the form of the psychological attitudes that a given company will face. The sections on how to do scenario thinking about potential segments to serve first are the best parts of the book. Be sure you do these steps. That's where most of the book's value will come for you. Otherwise, all you will have added is a terminology for describing how you failed to cross the chasm. I also commend the brief sections on how finance, research, and development, and human resources executives need to change their behavior in order to help the enterprise be more successful in crossing the chasm. After you finish reading and employing the book, I suggest that you also think about what other psychological perceptions will limit interest in and use of your new developments. You have more chasms to cross than simply the psychological orientation towards technology. You also have to deal with the tradition, misconception, disbelief, ugly duckling, bureaucracy, and communications stalls. Keep looking until you have found and dealt with them all! May you move across the chasm so fast, that you don't even notice that it's there!
Rating:
Summary: A classic in business analysis
Review: This book works best when read in combination with Inside the Tornado. These two books have also been updated and integrated into Moore's latest, Living on the Fault Line. Crossing the Chasm, like the other books, is about and for marketing within high-tech enterprises. Moore's view is that high tech products require marketing strategies that differ from those in other industries. The "chasm" is the gap between sales to technically literate buyers and mainstream buyers. Moore's book provides well thought out strategies for bridging this gap. Moore disputes the prevailing view that rapid mainstream growth can follow continuously from early market success. Quite different strategies are needed and Moore provides them, illustrated by examples of companies and products that have successfully crossed the chasm. This is well worth reading, though if you read only one book by Moore, make it his latest, Living on the Fault Line.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading, even if you think you already understand
Review: Long established as a classic, the drawing depicting the different classes of customers and their adoption rates are commonly used in the industry. I personally thought I already understood it, just from osmosis. However, reading the book taught me more about the characteristics of those customers, how you gain penetration into their markets, and most importantly how you manage a team and produce a product into those markets.
There are also lessons in there about establishing a beachhead and how to choose your target customer that dovetail nicely into some more modern work around persona identification in software development and the need to identify just one target persona for your application at a time. This is a great marketing book -- even if some of the specific company examples are somewhat dated -- whose concepts readily translate into not only management but directly into product development and vision.
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Summary: Really changed my life about technical sales
Review: There are some rare books that create revelations, and in my professional career, this is one of them. Now it is obvious why I often failed to connect with "Pragmatists" and other customers, who didn't seem to get it like the other "Visionaries" and "Technofiles" I had little trouble selling to. I was the one who didn't get it! In addition, marketing and sales books can be such dull tomes, but Moore's professional experience and accesible manner makes for an interesting read. His "lingo" has been picked up but many professionals, to the point where you need to read Moore just to be up to date. But the good news is, you will be much more effective in technical sales and marketing after reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: There are plenty of long reviews on this, so here's just a short synthesis. This is considered the Bible of marketing thought for early stage, technically-oriented products. It describes the phases of customer thinking, and how you have to appeal to them, including some non-intuitive but dead-on approaches for making the leap to the Early Majority. For some reason, this second edition seems to have been edited poorly though, with grammar erros and such. Unfortunate for a great work.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: A good book. I don't know much about high-tech or marketing in general but it kept me turning the pages, non the less. However, for an ex-english prof., this piece is littered with typos! Moore's predictable humour lends itself nicely to the overall warming, I want to help you help yourself ambiance of the book. All now unemployed techies (and post-bubble, will-work-for-food VC's) will enjoy it as they cozy up in front of the fireplace and patch their wounds with the 'If only...' band-aid. Hindsight is always 20-20... I hope I can look into the future with such good vision. Anyway, this book will surely help.
Rating:
Summary: Must-read for anyone in high-tech or biotech marketing
Review: "If you build a better mousetrap" is the old saw about inventing new and improved products. But this adage is completely wrong; if you build a better mousetrap, they DON'T come and buy it and you are left wondering why your product failed to make the grade. Geoffrey Moore writes clearly about the need to cross the chasm that exists between those customers who buy the latest and greatest and those who hang back for a bit, waiting for..what? They are waiting for an incentive to buy your product for other reasons than "it's NEW!" The problem is, there aren't enough of the customers who will buy anything because it's new and exciting--and what's more, the these customers aren't particularly loyal. The sweet spot of customers are those who wait to see if something new and inventive actually gives them back something of worth, a return on investment, a better way to work, doing more with less, you name it. These customers will often switch to a new technology, but only if they have the right incentive to do so. If you fail to market effectively to this type of customer, you end up with a pile of boutique products that languish in sales and don't ramp up the profits for your firm. To avoid this all-too-common scenario, many companies are now hiring consultants to teach Moore's methods to their marketing and R&D departments. By "Crossing the Chasm" they strive to market products that will sell. If you are in a tech business, and especially if you are an inventor marketing a new idea, reading this book is a very good idea. In fact, I'd say it's required reading.
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