Crossing the Chasm
Rogers' curve looks smooth, but Geoffrey Moore spotted a deadly gap hiding within it. Between the early adopters and the early majority lies a chasm - and countless promising innovations, celebrated by visionaries, fall into it and die before ever reaching the mainstream.[1]
Moore's chasm: the perilous gap between visionary early adopters and pragmatic mainstream buyers.
Why the chasm exists
The chasm exists because early adopters and the early majority are fundamentally different buyers. Early adopters are visionaries - they buy an exciting idea, tolerate flaws, and want to be first. The early majority are pragmatists - they buy proven, complete, reliable solutions with references from people like them. What thrills the visionary ("new and revolutionary!") is exactly what scares the pragmatist ("unproven and risky"). Success with early adopters does not automatically carry over.
How to cross it
- →Target a beachhead. Dominate one specific niche of the mainstream completely, rather than spreading thin.
- →Deliver the "whole product". Pragmatists want a complete, ready solution - support, integrations, references - not a promising core.
- →Provide social proof. Reference customers like them reduce the perceived risk that keeps pragmatists away.
- →Shift the message from vision to value. From "be first" to "this reliably solves your problem".
Has an innovation in your organisation ever stalled after promising early traction? Could it have been the chasm - visionaries loved it, but pragmatists never bought?
Sources
- Moore, G., Crossing the Chasm, 1991 (3rd ed. 2014).
- Rogers, E., Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed., 2003.
- Global Innovation Institute (GInI), Foundations of Innovation body of knowledge.