author : Geoffrey A. Moore

None of the proven success principles has changed. Companies are gambling fortunes and countless hours of technical talent on marketing technology products, and too many fail when they don’t need to. The new item – whether a new generation of computer, a digital video disk or a cellular phone – is greeted rapturously by a few adventurous consumers only to fizzle out in the wider marketplace. The huge success of a handful of high-tech products doesn’t even begin to balance out the failure of the rest. Now that more and more products are high-tech it is essential for marketing professionals to understand how to promote these products – and to discover exactly why the current model for high-tech marketing just isn’t working.

But if the principles of winning in high-tech markets remain unchanged the context has altered beyond recognition. Now, with years of invention to build on, new high-tech products are less likely to be clearly differentiated. The marketplace is absorbing the technology in gulps, for a while letting one company come to the fore, but substituting another should the first company stumble. Even more seismic though is the complete shift of communications infrastructure to the Internet. This new edition of Crossing the Chasm brings marketers right up to date with these dramatic developments.