Crossing the Chasm

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Summary: Essential for anyone in IT marketing
Review: The first section sets out the 'chasm' that IT products have to cross -- from early adopters to a mass audience. Very well written, useful, clearly informed by ground-level experience.

And then just when you assume that the *rest* of the book will be filled with variations on this single idea (like many business books) it goes into second and third gear, with real meat on market segmentation, 'whole products' and vertical vs horizontal market approaches. All of it analytically sound, practical, without the hubris that so often disfigures similar books.

I'm a techie by training, but marketing has been my destiny for the last couple of years. If you, like me, have been sweating to get the four P's to square with your experience in the trenches, get this book!

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Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This is a must read for all technology startups.

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Summary: great idea but could be summarized in one sentence
Review: This book illustrates a fault in the publishing industry. If you have a 50-page idea it is too long for a magazine. But it is too short for a book. So if you wanted to get it distributed before the Web came along, you had to drop in words until you reached 200 pages.

Here is Moore's important insight in one sentence: "Don't celebrate your victory in a market after becoming the market leader with pioneer consumers; as the mass market develops and all the competitive offerings have adequate performance, the new consumers won't care about the advanced features that your organization is exquisitely tuned to produce but rather ease of setup, ease of use, and low cost."

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Summary: Sound ideas and thought with the worst editing job on Earth
Review: The title says it all.

As other reviews suggest this book presents provocative, well referenced and novel thought to the industry, but is very poorly edited. Material added to this new addition contains grade-school quality sentences and diction with many passages that are nearly unintelligible.

For its content I recommend Moore's book, but I certainly hope the editors use a book of style when they peruse it for the next edition.

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Summary: Chasm is a popular, well-crafted book!
Review: References to this book are made so often; you're a bit "out of the loop" if you haven't read this one yet!

Crossing the Chasm is undoubtedly the most popular book on high-tech marketing. I skimmed a friend's copy a few years ago and, recently, had an opportunity to read it more carefully. Geoffrey Moore has a wonderful writing style. Moore is insightful as he is concise. In addition, he frequently cites real life examples (Microsoft, Oracle, Palm, etc.), so his arguments feel grounded in reality.

Moore uses the "Crossing the Chasm" analogy to discuss technology adoption cycles, whole product models, and strategies for market/product positioning.

All told, Chasm is enlightening and a good read for both the business-person or the layman with a general interest.

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Summary: Useful strategies for the next step.
Review: I don't want to suggest that this book will "revolutionise" the way you do business, because that would consign it to the trash can with all those other "revolutionary books" in my mind. This is a clear and concise workaday book that will help you to develop sales strategies that will deliver on your targets.

We all know about the early adopter strategies, but few people concentrate on what happens next. Crossing the Chasm identifies solutions for chopping up the majority markets into bitesize pieces that you can hand out to your sales force and expect them to hit.

This book gives you control over the targeting of your market and the realistic strategies that will capture market sales. If you are having problems hitting your targets, hit this book, and it might be the solution you needed.

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Summary: Dream to Reality
Review: I attended a planning session at a Fortune 500 company that used the premise of this book to take us into reality. The concept is solid marketing and echoes the corporate or, perhaps, venture business axiom that "we really loved this project when it was a dream!" And, who doesn't? This book gives us all practical knowledge about how to take our businesses from that small, little known phase of early adopters and get on the mainstream engine by crossing the chasm between those of us who are destined to remain a small business to one in which we really grow and proper and make our dream a reality in the mainstream

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Summary: A must read for hi-tech marketing professional
Review: A must read for all marketing professionals in the high-tech industry. What do you do after the early adopter excitement fades for a product? Moore gives a solid strategy for reaching the mainstream through a focused marketing and development effort. (The book was written in the early 90s so many of the example companies are long gone. Even so, the philosophies apply more than ever.)

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Summary: If not for the typos ...
Review: this would rate 5 stars. Geoffrey A. Moore's revision of his classic work on high-tech marketing is even more powerful in its presentation of the early Technology Adoption Life Cycle than the original. He has updated and revised his case studies and taken the disconcordant effects of the internet into consideration. With Prof. Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma, Crossing the Chasm (as well as Inside the Tornado and the upcoming Living on the Fault Line) remains one of the most necessary books to read on high-tech strategy. Unfortunately the publisher rushed the revision to print (to coinside with the paperback release of Inside the Tornado) with too many typos to ignore, especially since Mr. Moore is a former English Professor.

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Summary: My favorite high-tech marketing book
Review: This book describes a way of thinking about marketing problems that is extremely helpful for young companies. A key read!