Crossing the Chasm

I had a hard time with this book. On the one hand it is an excellent book about high tech marketing, or really, any marketing that is done to a niche product that has the potential to go mainstream with enough momentum. In that context, it is a pretty good book. I have to confess that I don’t really have much hands on experience with marketing, but it generally passes most of my BS filters. On the other hand, most of the examples that the book presents as marketing problems had significant technology problems, so they didn’t function effectively. That being said, the book does do one thing very effectively – it provides a great set of vocabulary with which to talk about marketing concepts and a roadmap for marketing a product from a niche product to one that enters the mainstream.

Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the Chasm

A terrible book. This book is a marketing book and it admits that in at the very beginning. That is the best part of the book – the rest of the entire book is the author talking about crossing the chasm between different categories of customers. The problem is that all the examples he gives are not the result of good or bad marketing, but of functionality. There might be some redeeming value to it – it does point out the different defining characteristics of the major consumer segments, but the problems are so large and overshadowing, they taint the author’s book in an irrevocable manner.