“Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore

Technology Adoption Life Cycle

Innovators Early Early Late

Adoption Majority Majority Laggards

Psych Tech has Tech has Practical wait Waiting for

Profile: central interest central interest & see the established
in their life in their life standard

The “cracked” model is more accurate.

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Innovators Early Early Late Laggards
Adopters Majority Majority

When a hot new technology product cannot be readily translated into

a major new benefit
Home Banking.

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In the High Tech Industries the Innovators are the technology
enthusiasts (e.g., VCE, Camcorders).

Early Adopters – (or visionaries) – provide insight to match an

emerging technologies to a strategic opportunity.

(E.g. Henry Ford assembly line they did not look for improvement.
Rather they looked for a breakthrough.

The Early Adopters communicate the deliverable to the next

group: (Price sensitively, ease of use.)

Laggard – are the skeptics.

Entering the mainstream – or how to “start a fire” is the challenge.

The strategy is not to become a sales driver, (vs. a niche strategy)

because we need to capture the Reference Base.

The key: select a strategic segment with entry points to a bigger

segment. Apples || segment (originally – school children).

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It reflects dissociation between the 2 groups – (Innovators & Early
Adopters).

There exists an opportunity to lose momentum and to miss transition

to the next stage.

e.g., PC based home banking

(In the transition from Innovators to Early Adopted).

The second crack

(between Early Adopters and Early Majority)
is even more important.

The transition requires a need for a strategic leap.

E.g. LAN’s launch has been attempted several times in the early
eighties until the development of Novel software running on IBM PC
hardware with interface cards that fitted into existing IBM PC slots.

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Successful Crossings:

(Desktop Publishing)
Apple

Application
Niche Approach

Tanden
(Automatic Teller Machine)

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