Early adopters. Mainstream market. Laggards. If you work in the high-tech industry, chances are you know what these terms mean. It's also highly likely that a colleague used these terms—or other terms from the book in which they originated, Crossing The Chasm—in a recent meeting. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the publication of Geoffrey Moore's landmark book. How can Crossing The Chasm have maintained its relevance in an industry obsessed with continuous innovation—in which products become obsolete overnight? Here are the three most important reasons I think Crossing The Chasm still resonates after all these years.
It synchronized the high-tech industry's language. Every industry has developed its own language to facilitate mutual understanding of terminology and the exact meaning of words. This unique language is called the "technical specification language." Whether you are in the airline business, real estate, or the computer industry, you need to know the terms and nomenclature of your field. Unlike in normal day-to-day language, words within a technical specification language have very narrow meanings. For example, a software company executive needs to understand industry terms such as SaaS (software as a service), J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition), and even token licensing.
The nomenclature within Crossing The Chasm has become a fundamental part of the high-tech industry's technical specification language, particularly for those at the executive level. Because the members of executive teams come from diverse backgrounds (sales, marketing, finance, and computer sciences), they need to standardize on a single language to meaningfully communicate among themselves. In addition, this language is the yardstick by which peers measure a person's relevant knowledge. Outside of formal titles, it's a key way members of a peer group establish a hierarchy.
It provides realistic models of customer behavior. The high-tech industry is unlike any other, because the customers are unlike any other. The industry creates complex products that are purchased by extremely sophisticated people to run their enterprises. The nature of enterprise technology sales is such that the decision process involves multiple people, or multiple groups of people, who, in varying degrees, make the purchase decision. Finally, the buying decision is made over a period of time that is typically measured in weeks or months.
Therefore, introducing new products into the enterprise market is more challenging than in any other market. Enterprise sales may involve material items such as computers, applications, and consulting services or intangibles such as the creation of new ideas, license agreements, and partnerships. This was one of the first books to acknowledge and explain the unique attributes of enterprise technology buyers. The book was geared to the high-tech industry, and the case studies, examples, and models of customer behavior took those unique sales challenges into account.
It has a deeper underlying psychological interpretation. My favorite part of the book is the following passage from the acknowledgments: "It chagrins me to have to say, therefore, that there are no documented sources of evidence anywhere in the book that follows. Although I routinely cite numerous examples, I have no studies to back them up, no corroborating witnesses, nothing."
You see, Geoffrey Moore was originally an English professor who gravitated to the high-tech industry and became a successful consultant at the well-respected firm of Regis McKenna. However, that wasn't enough. He had an innovative idea, a desire to make a name for himself, and a dream to strike it rich. And this drive is at the heart and soul of Silicon Valley. It's what created Oracle and Google and made Steve Jobs a household name. And if you want to do likewise and prove you're the smartest person in the room, a good place to start is with Crossing The Chasm, even if it's far from new.
Steve W. Martin is author of The Real Story Of Informix Software And Phil White: Lessons In Business And Leadership For The Executive Team.
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