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1-Page Summary of Crossing the Chasm
Overview
All new technology takes time to be adopted by a community. This adoption process happens in stages, and each stage is influenced by the attitudes of people within that group.
The first to adopt a new technology are the tech enthusiasts, who think that having the latest technology is important. They want it before anyone else even if there are some problems with it.
The next group of people are visionaries. They’re not interested in the technology itself, but rather how it could provide them with a strategic advantage. They seek breakthroughs and improvements that aren’t just incremental steps forward from what’s already out there.
There are two types of people when it comes to adopting new technology. The first type is the early adopters, who are interested in trying out new things and supporting technological advances. They’re followed by the mainstream market, which consists of pragmatists who aren’t as interested in innovation but rather want to make sure they have a reliable product that works well for them.
The fourth group consists of people who are conservative and prefer simple products that don’t have many complications or features.
Finally, the skeptics are a small group of people who don’t like new technology. However, they can provide valuable feedback about how your product is failing to meet their expectations.
Big Idea #1: Between visionaries and pragmatists lies a chasm where products languish and companies die.
When a product is introduced, it must go through the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. This means that people will be skeptical about purchasing the product at first. However, once they do start using it and see how great it is, they’ll tell their friends about it. This process continues as more and more people buy the product until everyone has one. The problem with disruptive innovations is that while this cycle works for incremental improvements to existing products or services, these new products require substantial changes in behavior from customers before they can work effectively.
There are two types of people who buy high-tech products: visionaries and pragmatists. Visionaries want to change the world with new technology, while pragmatists only want to make incremental improvements.
There are differences between visionaries and pragmatists. Pragmatists want to see references from other customers, as well as evidence that the vendor has a solid support structure in place. Without this, they won’t buy from you. Visionaries don’t care about references or infrastructure; all they’re interested in is your product’s potential impact on their business.
A catch-22 is a situation in which one’s choices are limited by contradictory restrictions. A company that finds itself between the early market and mainstream market will find it difficult to grow because it will have difficulty attracting new customers from the mainstream market. These companies may still be able to sell their product to its existing customer base, but they won’t be able to attract many more customers due to this small size of their current customer base. This results in low sales volume, and revenue growth comes to a standstill. The value of these companies decreases as well as investor confidence in them becomes shaky; therefore, investors push out the original management team that launched the innovative product or service. To avoid this fate, every company must have a plan for crossing over into the mainstream market successfully.
