Crossing the chasm is one of the hardest challenges a product manager will face so it’s surprising to see so many attempting it in the wrong way. Building on the work of Geoffrey Moore and comments from Jeff Bonforte I’m going to summarise how you can correct your actions.
First let’s start with a quick recap of what crossing the chasm means. In his book, Moore introduces his technology adoption curve which comprises of innovators and early adopters, followed by the early majority, the late majority and the laggards. He then goes on to explain how most products fail to reach the early majority and fall into the chasm before it. This is the area where adoption stagnates.
Now this is a great way to summarise a general adoption curve but it doesn’t detail how you can craft better products. Nor does it really state how to accelerate through the curve. That’s why Bonforte suggests using a new perspective on the curve based on the emotional state for technology adoption. His revised curve includes the lover, the irrational, the efficient, the laugher and the comfortable as the user groups.
The lovers use your product because they find the technology cool. The irrationals usage is not economically rational, it is emotionally driven. The efficients choose to adopt when the technology becomes practical while the laughers want the benefits without experiencing any pain. Finally, the comfortable want all the benefits but the product needs to be drop dead simple.
The reason why most products are doing discovery and adoption wrong is because they focus on Moore’s simplistic definitions to the letter rather than Bonforte’s. In my opinion, it is the latter’s mindset which can help you build a product that is valuable, usable and feasible with adoption rates that make your competitors green with envy. From a lean perspective it also helps you save a whole lot more resource too. As a result, I’ll use Bonforte’s definitions throughout the rest of this post.
There is an unhealthy obsession with the lovers during product discovery and the early phases of adoption. I call it unhealthy because this group will buy your product because they have an astute interest in your core technology. They are also the first group though your doors as they actively seek ways to feed their interest. So naturally it makes sense when you’re starting out to focus on this group but the problem with this is that the needs of this group differ greatly from the rest of your market.
Let’s take a look at a quick example. Lovers download and interact with artificial intelligence as they like machine learning technologies. However, irrationals download artificial intelligence as they want personal recommendations and have a problem with finding compelling results. They could use Google or Yelp but they invest time in the solution because they’re passionate about solving their problem. While this groups behaviour is not rational it is exhibited by the other groups further down the adoption curve, albeit less strongly. So if you can tap into the mindset of the irrationals then the results can be outstanding.
One word of caution however is that Bonforte disregards the lovers as they are not interesting. While his point may have merit they are a very able group to include in your charter user program while you can also learn a lot from them by looking beyond your industry. They are also the most receptive to your efforts when looking for case studies which are imperative when trying to gain traction. Just make sure you don’t mix the lovers with the irrationals as the latter are where you learn the most. A great way to do that is by focusing on anger rather than frustrations as this emotion better qualifies an irrational.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether you agree so please leave them in the comments below.
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