Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Collins Business Essentials)

That is, there is an initial period of rapid revenue growth, representing the development of the early market, followed by a period of slow to no growth (the chasm period), followed by a second phase of rapid growth, representing return on one’s initial mainstream market development.

Conservatives like to buy preassembled packages, with everything bundled, at a heavily discounted price.

Classically, the first people to adopt any new technology are those who appreciate the technology for its own sake.

The tactic, which at once secures proper management of the list and initiates a transition process from pioneer to settler culture in the development side of the house, is to take this list away from the product manager and give it to the whole product manager. For whoever is serving as the product manager at this point almost certainly is a pionee

For all these reasons—for whole product leverage, for word-of-mouth effectiveness, and for perceived market leadership—it is critical that, when crossing the chasm, you focus exclusively on achieving a dominant position in one or two narrowly bounded market segments. If you do not commit fully to this goal, the odds are overwhelmingly against your

From the investment point of view, the most pressing question initially is, How wide is the chasm? Or, to put this in investment terms, How long will it take before I can achieve a reasonably predictable ROI from an acceptably large mainstream market?

In the realm of high tech, pragmatist CEOs are not common, and those there are, true to their type, tend to keep a relatively low profile. Dan Warmenhoven at NetApp, Jeff Weiner at LinkedIn, John Chen at Sybase, John Donahoe at eBay, even such visible leaders as Meg Whitman at HP and Michael Dell at Dell—low on drama, high on integrity and commitme

It is extremely difficult to cross the chasm in a consumer market. Almost all successful crossings happen in business markets, where the economic and technical resources can absorb the challenges of an immature product and service offering.

The other reason to forgo initial profitability is when the category is expected to develop so rapidly that you cannot afford to grow organically as a bit player.