I never did finish up my favorite quotes from the Geoffrey Moore’s book: Crossing the Chasm. I finished the book, but never finished with my favorite quotes. Here they are. Enjoy!

“The chasm separates not only visionaries from pragmatists- it also separates the companies that serve them.” 

“It is the move from being pioneers to becoming settlers.” 

“They want to do great deeds, and when there are no more great deeds to be done, they want to move on.” 

“Nonetheless, once you have crossed the chasm, these people can become a potential liability. Their fundamental interest is to innovate, not administrate.” 

“It is critical, therefore, that as the enterprise shifts from the product centric world of the early market to the market-centric world of the mainstrem, that pioneer technologists be transferred elsewhere–ideally, into another project within the enterprise, but if necessary, to another company.” 

“WIthout them [the pioneers], achieving early market leadership is all but impossible.” 

“The key to leaving the chasm behind, however, is to stop custom developments and institutionalize the whole product, to build to a set of standards that the marketplace as a whole can support.” 

“There are two sets of people–high tech pioneers and pioneer salespeople.” 

“And they build fences and create laws (called procedures) and do all the things that created range wars between pioneers and settlers back in the Old West.” 

“…At the beginning of the chasm period, the organization is dominated by pioneers, with strong powers invested in a few top-gun salespeople and product managers. By the time we are into the mainstream market, that power should be distributed far more broadly among major account managers, industry marketing managers, and product marketing managers. This gradual dissemination of authority will ultimately frustrate the pioneer contributors, hampering their ability to make quick decisions and rapid responses. Ultimately, it will make them want to leave.” 

“The key to discriminate between account penetration and account development: the latter is more predictable, less remarkable achievement. It is also the more lucrative.” 

“Compensation for the pioneer salesperson should have the opposite characteristics. It should provide the bulk of its rewards immediately, in recognition of a single key achievement–winning the account.” 

“What the pioneer technologist does have a right to is a large share of the early market returns, because here it truly is the core product that drives success. The problem is that cash is typically so tight during this period that there is none to throw off in the form of a reward. So equity is the usual fallback.” 

“Like authors [pioneer technologists] are compelled to condust their craft regardless of whether anyone will pay for it.” 

“To sum up, improper compensation wastes dollars and demotivates people.” 

“[R&D's] heroes are less like Einstein, who developed a whole universe out of his own head, and more like George Washington Carver, who discovered over three hundred different uses for the same peanut.” 

“Target the point of attack…assemble the invasion force…define the battle…launch the invasion, selecting our intended distribution channel and setting our pricing to give us motivational leverage over that channel.” 

Crossing the Chasm Review I

Chrossing the Chasm Review II

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1. Crossing the Chasm: Book Review | Nate Nead

   January 24, 2009 at 7:03 am

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