Chasm – crossing the gaps
by Yasushi Kusume
'Chasm: The difficulty any group will have in accepting a new product, if it is presented in the same way as it was to the group to its immediate left'.
Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore
Successful new products are accepted in different ways by different groups of people. And the quote by Geoffrey Moore above highlights how important it is for innovators to understand the needs of each of those groups. Because they’re not all the same. Which makes it vital to bridge the gaps between them, and so ensure a seamless progression from one to the other.
5 Stages of Acceptance
The Technology Adaptation Life Cycle illustrates, and explains, how the public embraces innovations. There are five stages, or groups of people, and each one comes with a specific demographic and psychographic* profile. From first to last, they are:
Innovators: Large farms, educated, prosperous, risk-oriented.
Early Adopters: Younger, educated community leaders, less prosperous.
Early Majority: Conservative, open to new ideas, active in the community.
Late Majority: Older, less educated, somewhat conservative, less socially active.
Laggards: Very conservative, small farms, older, least educated.
Disrupt or Sustain
Broadly speaking, there are two types of innovation: Disruptive and Sustainable. The Sustainable builds on existing ideas and technology; it develops what has come before. But the Disruptive, as Moore points out, not only uses new technology, it also demands changes in consumer behaviour. And unlike the Sustainable, it very often requires new infrastructure and supporting businesses.
People tend to think that the Disruptive is strictly for high-tech industries, and therefore the five Life Cycle categories apply only to their innovations. But Moore disagrees. He believes low-tech industries should look for Disruptive innovations too. But he does concede that doing so will pose challenges for them.
Such companies will face additional hurdles because they have to craft solutions that resonate not just with Innovators and Early Adopters, but also the Late Majority market. This a problem because many - if not most - of them have already successfully established large markets by focusing on the Late Majority market. So coming up with financial measurements and business strategies for occasional innovations becomes a struggle. They’re not used to it.
There are those, though, who believe they shouldn’t even try.
Find the Excitement
For business analyst Seth Godin, the key to the success of innovation doesn’t lie with mass approval. In his book, This is Marketing, he emphasizes how important it is for companies to resist the urge to adjust innovations to suit everyone. They should go in the opposite direction, he writes, and focus their energy on finding people excited by fresh, new propositions.
Appealing to a wide audience, Godin believes, means running the risk of receiving too many adverse reactions to a new product. The temptation then is to cut out the parts that don't appeal to all, which in turn leads to removing the very properties that made the product unique and innovative in the first place. If the goal is innovation, then a company should actively search for consumers who understand it and are looking for it.
Freedom to Innovate
In his book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen suggests that separating innovation from the current organization is crucial for success. I would go further though, and suggest that companies appoint a decision-making board dedicated to nothing but innovation. Setting such a board apart from the rest of the organisation will give it freedom to innovate, to come up with fresh new concepts, free from concerns about pleasing everybody.
Companies that do this, that permit themselves the freedom to take a risk, will be better placed to recognize the ‘chasms’ inherent in the Technology Adaptation Life Cycle. And in so doing, they’ll also be able to reach – finally – the late adopters and the key to mass market success.
*Psychographics: ‘the study of customers in relation to their opinions, interests, and emotions’. Cambridge Dictionary.