Rating: 
Summary: Good ideas, about 100 pages too long
Review: What it says about marketing new bleeding edge software products is right on the money with valid examples and case histories. A little to heavy on the methodology and too lite on the entrepreneural and creativity side.
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Summary: Crossing the chasm moves you into market leadership
Review: The high tech market illusion markets new technology immediately too the mass marketed. Enthusiasts of the market illusion argue, "if Bill Gates can market windows to the masses, why can I market my technology to the mass market?" At the origin, all high tech markets have a gap between the mainstream-market, the chasm. The chasm problem can't be solved by voluntary assistance, all the resources required to cross the chasm must be requested. In a closed market, a central authority controls all standards and rules. This works fine for a closed market, however, the mass market is composed of numerous interest groups and each group is distinguished by its own psychology and demographics. This each each group will have its own market response. The key too crossing the Chasm means understanding each group niche and its relationship to its neighbor niches. Make a total commitment to a niche and don't take on more than one or two niches at a time. Reverse the trend in the niche decision from high risk and low data too high data and low risk. Focus resources to become dominate in the niche, big fish in small pond. Characterize the target: create something that feels like real people, record down your customer scenerios, store thumbnail information about each customer, and determine how the product will be brought to use by the customer.
Accepting this reality means building a whole application that solves a 100 percent of the business problems of the group, this becomes the high tech lore: 1. target the right customer 2. derive the compelling buying reason 3. build the whole product 4. form partners and allies 5. create a distribution channel 6. find the right pricing 7. distinquish from competition or create competition 8. position into the niche and work to create a mass market merge 9. determine the next target customer.
The high tech innovator must become enlighten. As you cross the chasm you will not be a market leader, but by the time you reach the other side, there will be a strong following. The high tech innovator must realize the markets do not unfold in a smooth continuous manner, there are perils in the chasm, and gain niche loyalty is the key to gain mass-market loyalty. The innovator must gain the trust of the pragmatist. The pragmatist is critical to gain customers because of his large support base. Once the pragmatist is won over, he remains very loyal to the application. It is impossible to win mass-market acceptance with gain the pragmatist loyalty.
Visionaries give high tech companies their first breaks. The winning strategy is for the entrepreneur to define product deliverables. The Visionaries can give the high tech company a burst of revenue and exceptional visibility and without the boost the high-tech products can't make it to market. The visionary is in a hurry to build the future and perceives limited windows of opportunity. Because the opportunity windows are small, large sums of money are generated to complete the project on time. The entrepreneur must create phases of the visionaries project. The high tech company must seed the entrepreneur community with their idea and product overview and hope that a visionary will share its vision. The process is a creative imaginative dream and high tech company is offering a credible way for visionary to realize their dream. The core of the dream is a business goal and it involves a quantum leap forward in the way business gets done and it also involves a high degree of recognition and reward. The dream is looking for a fundamental breakthrough.
The market is flush with enthusiasm and vision. The high tech company must attempt to distinguish themselves from their competitors and once the mainstream merges with the market niche, wealth and growth occur.
The early majority wants evolutionary and not revolutionary product features. The early majority is concerned about disrupting their organization. A very pragmatic attitude compels the early major to seek resource references reassuring them on the technology investment.
The early adopters hope to gain a jump on their competition, lower production costs, provide more complete customer service, and create a radical discontinuity between the old way of doing business and the new way.
It is tough to break into a new industry when selling to a pragmatist. Pragmatists deeply value the experience of their colleagues and funds are in the hands of prudent souls. Pragmatists seek a percentage improvement: incremental, measurable, and predictable and too them risk represents a chance to waste money. The natural prudence and budget restrictions keep them cautious. Pragmatist focus on standardization, increased sales, and lower costs and once won they are very loyal.
The customer can't reference each other when they are in different markets. Customer reference is a chain reaction affected usually by word of mouth. The market purpose must be to develop and shape something that is real and has a set of potential customers and a given set of products and services and allows the customers to reference each other when making buying decisions.
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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.
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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.
Rating: 
Summary: PR Wired for the Internet
Review: Both the Chasm and the Tornado books deal with the fundementals of how technology companies either do or should come to market. As so often with work like this it is often bought and a few pages read - and little is taken on board as to how to implement the ideas. In my previous role in BT both these books were heavily promoted by PA Consultants who did a load of marketing training for us - but you tell me if you think they were read with any real insight? The recommendations and points discussed relate to coming to the market through the early adopters and visionaries - then if successful we should be able to move to the mass market. Unfortunately even though we know this to be true intuitively and can prove it's true in the real world - most marketing departments want to go big, mass market, fast. This is a bible for visionaries, innovators, start-ups, small businesses with a focus on customer relationships - if your in a big corporate, forget it. Nobody will let you proceed like this - it will be too contra to the arrogant,internal focus most corporates have. If you consider yourself a visionary, manic business missionary - then this is the book for you (just don't expect your friends in big companies to understand what your talking about as they burn their way though millions of unfocused marketing budget!)
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