Product Adoption Curve Chasm

The model indicates that the first group of people to use a new product is called innovators followed by early adopters. The product adoption process chasm lies between these two groups of people. As can be seen in figure 1 the technology adoption life cycle has a bell curve and the divisions in the curve are roughly equivalent to where standard deviations would fall.
product adoption curve chasm crossing the chasm product adoption curve

These best practices are based on geoffrey moores best selling books crossing the chasm inside the tornado living on the fault line dealing with darwin and escape velocity plus hundreds of client engagements with high tech companies.

Product adoption curve chasm. Its called the chasm. The technology adoption lifecycle is a sociological model that describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups. As the chart above represents crossing the chasm means breaking into the mainstream market. Crossing the chasm is closely related to the technology adoption life cycle where five main segments are recognized.

Crossing the chasm means the opportunity for hyper growth and market success. Its the leap from being a new little known and exploratory product to mass adoption and well known status. But that leap is much easier said than done. That is the chasm.

The chasm diffusion model. There is a peculiar phase in the life cycle of a high tech product that moore calls a chasm this is the phase in which a product is getting used by early adopters but not yet by an early majority. Innovators early adopters early majority late majority and laggards. The chasm refers to the technology adoption lifecycle or the transition from the early market into the mainstream eye.

Organizations need to ensure that they are able to convince the latter about the value that the product can deliver and the value that they can realize. Technology adoption life cycle. Chasm institute llc helps high tech teams learn apply and implement best practices in market development strategy. Every truly innovative high tech product starts out as a fad something with no known market value or purpose but with great properties that generate a lot of enthusiasm within an in crowd.

This means that innovators make up about 25 of the total population the early adopters about 135 the early majority and the late majority both 34 and the laggards the remaining 16. Thats the early market. In most product adoption curves theres a point that can make or break the success of the product. Then comes a period during which the rest of the world watches to see if anything can be made of this.

Product adoption processes needs a solid strategy. If the early adopters succeed in bridging this critical juncture to the more sceptical masses we reach a tipping point allowing the curve to rise as the masses accept the innovation and sink again when only the stragglers remain. Its the point between the early adopter stage and the early majority stage. Next come the early majority and late maj.

As it shows the real challenge to ensuring an innovation takes hold is crossing the chasm. In that stage there is a wide gap between those two psychographic profiles. The process of adoption over time is typically illustrated as a classical normal distribution or bell curve.