Sublime

From the customer perspective, then, as we argued in the previous chapter, the key issue when crossing the chasm is market leadership versus a viable competitive set, captured by comparison to your two reference competitors, and the key pricing strategy is premium margin above a norm set by these comparisons. That is, you have earned a premium over

The point is that underlying technologies change, but, after a point, technology market shares don’t change and so they’re highly predictable.

“minimal viable product.”

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

The post-chasm enterprise is bound by the commitments made by the pre-chasm enterprise. These pre-chasm commitments, made in haste during the flurry of just trying to get a foothold in an early market, are all too frequently simply unmaintainable in the new situation. That is, they promise a level of performance or reward that, if delivered, would

What is particularly awkward for a high-tech company making this transition is that for the first time the major sources of desired evidence are not directly under its control. This is not a matter of having the right features or winning the right benchmark war. It is a matter of other people—theoretically disinterested third parties—voting to

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? The simple answer to this question is, as long as it takes to create and install a sustainable whole product. The chasm model asserts that no mainstream market can occur

a millimetre of progress in a million directions.

At no time is this marketing proposition more true than when crossing the chasm. Prior to the chasm there is some hope that the visionaries will backfill the whole product through their own systems integration efforts. Once the product is established in the mainstream, there is some hope that some third party will see an opportunity for itself to