Listen up! The following applies to every, EVERY new venture. Everyone is ignorant of the following, and the result of ignorance is certain failure.
In the case of Darfur, ignorance of the following has cost 450,000 lives so far.
The above is from the book "Crossing the Chasm," by Geoffrey Moore.
The following is from a digested version on the net I just found that seems fairly good:
A Summary of “Crossing the Chasm”
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTMLGeoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm, Marketing and Selling High-Tech ... Now, by definition, when you are crossing the chasm, you are not a market leader. ...www.parkerhill.com/Summary%20of%20Crossing%20the%20Chasm.pdf - Similar pages
The heart of the summary:
Moore demonstrates that in fact, there are cracks in the curve, between each phase of the cycle, representing a disassociation between any two groups; that is, "the difficulty any group will have in accepting a new product if it is presented the same way as it was to the group to its immediate left." The largest crack, so large it can be considered a chasm, is between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority. Many (most) high tech ventures fail trying to make it across this chasm.
- Early Adopters are the rare breed of visionaries "who have the insight to match an emerging technology to a strategic opportunity,… driven by a 'dream'. The core dream is a business goal, not a technology goal, and it involves taking a quantum leap forward in how business is conducted in their industry or by their customers… Visionaries drive the high-tech industry because they see the potential for an 'order-of-magnitude' return on investment and willingly take high risks to pursue that goal. They will work with vendors who have little or not funding… As a buying group, visionaries are easy to sell but very hard to please… because they are buying a dream…They want to start out with a pilot project, which makes sense because they are 'going where no man has gone before' and you are going with them. This is followed by more project work, conducted in phases with milestones, and the like."
"You can succeed with the visionaries, and you can thereby get a reputation for being a high flyer with a hot product, but that is not ultimately where the dollars are. Instead, those funds are in the hands of more prudent souls who do not want to be pioneers"
- The Early Majority are pragmatists… "they care about the company they are buying from, the quality of the product they are buying, the infrastructure of supporting products and system interfaces, and the reliability of the service they are going to get… Pragamatists tend to be 'vertically' oriented, meaning that they communicate more with others like themselves within their own industry than do technology enthusiasts and early adopters… It is very difficult to break into a new industry selling to pragmatists. References and relationships are very important…Pragmatists won't buy from you until you are established, yet you can't get established until they buy from you…
"On the other hand, once a startup has earned its spurs with the pragmatist buyers within a given vertical market, they tend to be very loyal to it, and even go out of their way to help it succeed. When this happens, the cost of sales goes way down, and the leverage on incremental R&D to support any given customer goes way up. That's one of the reasons pragmatists make such a great market…
"They like to see competition… Pragmatists want to buy from proven market leaders because they know third parties will design supporting products around a market-leading products… aftermarket…
"Overall, to market to pragmatists, you must be patient. You need to be conversant with the issues that dominate their particular business. You need to show up at the industry-specific conferences and trade shows they attend. You need to be mentioned in articles that run in magazines they read. You need to be installed in other companies in their industry. You need to have developed applications that are specific to their industry. You need to have partnerships and alliances with the other vendors who serve their industry. You need to have earned a reputation for quality and service.
- "Pragmatists are not anxious to reference visionaries in their buying decisions. Hence the chasm. Four fundamental characteristics of visionaries that alienate pragmatists:
1. Lack of respect for colleagues' experiences.
2. Taking greater interest in technology than in their industry.
3. Failing to recognize the importance
GO TO THE LINK TO THIS SUMMAR AND CONTINUE READING...
A Summary of “Crossing the Chasm”File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTMLGeoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm, Marketing and Selling High-Tech ... Now, by definition, when you are crossing the chasm, you are not a market leader. ...www.parkerhill.com/Summary%20of%20Crossing%20the%20Chasm.pdf - Similar pages
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