The Chasm Companion : A Fieldbook to Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado
- Book Review,
by Paul Wiefels
Amazon.com
Fans of Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado will certainly be attracted to The Chasm Companion, a step-by-step manual by longtime Moore associate Paul Wiefels that lays out specific ways to apply his popular tech-oriented business principles in our fast-changing world. But even those who never warmed to the earlier works--which proposed a pragmatic path for successfully navigating the ever-moving environment of "disruptive technologies that force changes in both strategy and behavior"--could find this book appealing. Designing The Chasm Companion as a hands-on field guide, Wiefels opens by explaining six "inflection points" in high-tech market development (the Early Market, the Chasm, the Bowling Alley, the Tornado, Main Street, Total Assimilation) that he and Moore insist everyone must carefully watch and properly react to as internal and external conditions evolve. He then outlines models and tools developed in the consulting practice he co-founded with Moore that enable individual corporations to carefully craft relevant strategies that they can align correctly with the appropriate market phases defined earlier. Finally, he presents initiatives (strategy validation, whole product management, marketing communications planning, and field engagement strategy) to help these firms actually implement their plans. Graphics and sidebars help Wiefels drive his points home clearly. --Howard Rothman
From Library Journal
Although he is now a university professor and literary scholar (Literature Against Theory, Plato to Derrida: A Defense of Poetry), in 1969 Edmundson was a football-obsessed underachiever with a bleak future. That's when he and some rowdy classmates signed up for Frank Lears's high school philosophy course. The rumpled new teacher looked like an easy target for their sophomoric pranks, but he managed to persevere with some unconventional teaching methods that turned several of the slackers into thoughtful students. Lears made a big impression on the author when he rearranged seating, replaced the dry textbook with interesting reading materials (particularly Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), played phonograph records, posed provocative questions, and listened intently to the responses. There's little pedagogical wisdom to be gained from this now, but it was innovative and effective in Medford, MA, 30-plus years ago. Edmundson has a remarkable memory for details and emotions from his youth, and his descriptions of Lears's reactions to classroom situations are fascinating. This memoir could have benefited from more of those reactions and less of the author's nonscholastic conflicts, which detract from his academic transformation. Nonetheless, this often moving autobiography is a worthwhile read. For large academic and public libraries. Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Wiefels and partner Geoffrey Moore are cofounders of the Chasm Group, a Silicon Valley high-tech consulting firm. This is a guide to understanding and implementing the market-development strategies described in Moore's best-sellers Inside the Tornado (1995) and Crossing the Chasm (1999). The partners have developed a model called the technology adoption life cycle (TALC), which describes how communities of people adopt innovations and integrate them into mainstream life. The chasm phase is a product-development black hole, a period of time in which products that show promise are ignored by the public at large. Other stages described on the path to total assimilation by the culture are the bowling alley, the tornado, and Main Street. The book offers real-life management formulas for guiding high-tech innovations through these treacherous phases of development. Wiefels' experience in the field gives readers an edge in anticipating the pitfalls unique to each phase. His introduction to the TALC is clear and informative; the descriptions of market-development strategies are exhaustive and detailed. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
In The Chasm Companion, The Chasm Group's Paul Wiefels presents readers with a new analysis of the ideas introduced in bestselling author Geoffrey Moore's classic books, Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, and focuses on how to translate these ideas into actionable strategy and implementation programs. This step-by-step fieldbook is organized around three major concepts: how high-tech markets develop, creating market development strategy, and executing go-to-market programs based on the strategy.
Book Info
A step by step manual by longtime Moore associate Paul Wiefels that lays out specific ways to apply his popular tech-oriented business principles in our fast-changing world. Softcover.
About the Author
Paul Wiefels is a founding partner and managing director of The Chasm Group LLC, a strategy consulting firm serving technology-based companies and organizations around the world. He has worked in the high-tech industry for 20 years and speaks frequently to high-tech industry organizations. He lives in Half Moon Bay, California.
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