Geoffrey Moore
Encyclopedia
Geoffrey Moore is a Silicon Valley
based high technology consultant
, venture partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures and author
.
His books are derived from his Silicon Valley consulting work at The McKenna
Group and The Chasm Group (which he founded), and earlier work by Everett Rogers
on adopter categories and diffusion of innovations
.
Group, Moore was a sales and marketing executive at Rand Information Systems, Enhansys, and Mitem. He is currently a Venture Partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures and Managing Director of TCG Advisors.
Moore received a bachelor's degree in American literature from Stanford University (1967) and a doctorate in English literature from the University of Washington (1974).
Moore began his professional life as an English professor at Olivett College in Michigan, before moving his family to California where he took a job as a corporate trainer and executive assistant at a technology company. His initial jobs in sales and marketing at three software firms ended with all firms ending in bankruptcy.
Moore and his wife Marie have three adult children, Margaret, Michael and Anna.
One of Moore's key insights is that as one progresses through the technology adoption life cycle used as a model for high tech marketing, there is a credibility gap that occurs in trying to move on through the adoption segments outlined below.
His major contribution in the field is the 'chasm' that separates the early market and early adopter visionaries from the early pragmatists when confronted with discontinuous innovations. The various groups or segments or profiles adopt innovations in stages based on their unique psycho-graphic profiles (a combination of psychological, demographic, and social attributes).
Moore defines the early market as being made up of technology enthusiasts and innovators who are looking for state of the art technology and try innovations out just to see if they will work. These lone technical inventors usually don't have any buying influence in organizations so must be seeded with products so they may be used as references for the next profile in the early market.
That would be the visionary early adopters who are change agents looking for an order of magnitude improvement or fundamental breakthrough or quantum leap in competitive advantage in the way business is conducted.
The next segment in the technology adoption life cycle are the early pragmatists who do not trust visionaries as a reference base, and act like herd animals in the adoption of innovations, so are very reference or support oriented. So this creates a catch-22 since the only references that an early pragmatists will use is another pragmatists that is in their industry.
The chasm is a drastic lull in market development that occurs after the visionary market is saturated and pragmatists will not buy into a discontinuous technology unless they can reference other pragmatists, thus the catch 22. Pragmatists dependent exclusively on references from others in their own industry and are highly support oriented
Moore uses a metaphorical bowling alley where one targets vertical industry market segments with broken mission critical business processes in order to penetrate this low risk product. If a popular app is found while these pragmatist are adopting as pins in a bowling alley a tornado of demand may develop where late pragmatists adopt en masses.
If enough of the technical complexity is designed out of the product the next adoption group, the conservatives on main street may adopt if they trust in a pragmatist reference base.
Finally there are the straggling skeptics who will only buy into a technology product if it is say, a microprocessor buried in the braking system of the pick up truck they are driving.
Managing for Shareholder value through Competitive Advantage GAP and Competitive Advantage Period CAP
GAP is a term used in investment analysis that interprets a company's current reported revenue and margin performance as a gauge of the competitive separation it currently enjoys in its target markets.
CAP refers to estimates of the length of time an investor believes a company can maintain a differentiated position that creates competitive separation.
The Jungle and the Royal Court
Moore defines the market share pecking order resulting from category outcomes in terms of the 'proprietariness' of the technology that an offering has embedded.
In an hierarchy resulting from the jungle scenario the pecking order is set firm in its place once established. The gorilla is the market-share leader whose position is sustained by proprietary technology that has high switching costs, leading to both high GAP and long CAP, the marks of exceptional shareholder value for the company. The chimp's market share position is subordinate to the gorilla in a market where both vendors have proprietary technology that is incompatible with the other's. To survive, chimps must typically create strongholds in niche markets where they are the local market leader or 'gorilla in the niche'. A monkey company has little to no market share in a category dominated by a gorilla, its strategy is to reproduce the gorilla's in-market offering as best it can and sell it at a substantial discount.
In the royal court scenario the roles of king, prince and serf are fluid throughout the life of the category in question. The king is the market share leader whose position is sustained primarily by execution. Compared to gorillas kings typically have equally high GAPs but, because they can be more readily swapped out, significantly shorter CAPs, resulting in lower shareholder value. The prince is a market-share challenger whose position is sustained primarily by execution as opposed to proprietary technology with high switching costs. Compared to chimps, princes have fare more volatile CAPs because they have the opportunity to displace kings as the market leader but also the vulnerability of being displaced by some another would be prince. The serf is a market share also-ran in a market with low switching costs, serfs enter and exit product categories opportunistically based on short lived offer power advantages. They are the ultimate commoditizing force. Compared to monkeys, serfs have lower barriers to entry as there is no proprietary technology to clone.
Core and Context
Core is any activity that cretes sustainable differentiation in the target market resulting in premium prices or increased volume. Core management seeks to dramatically outperform all competitors within the domain of core.
Context is any activity that does not differentiate the company from the customer's viewpoint in the target market. Context management seeks to meet , but not exceed, appropriate accepted standards in a productive a manner as possible.
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
based high technology consultant
Consultant
A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...
, venture partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
.
His books are derived from his Silicon Valley consulting work at The McKenna
Regis McKenna
Regis McKenna is best known for helping start several Silicon Valley firms during the 1970s and 1980s with his own marketing firm, Regis McKenna, Inc., founded in 1970. McKenna retired from consulting in 2000 and is concentrating his efforts on high tech entrepreneurial seed-ventures...
Group and The Chasm Group (which he founded), and earlier work by Everett Rogers
Everett Rogers
Everett M. Rogers was a communication scholar, sociologist, writer, and teacher. He is best known for originating the diffusion of innovations theory and for introducing the term early adopter....
on adopter categories and diffusion of innovations
Diffusion of innovations
Diffusion of Innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. Everett Rogers, a professor of rural sociology, popularized the theory in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations...
.
Biography
Prior to working with The McKennaRegis McKenna
Regis McKenna is best known for helping start several Silicon Valley firms during the 1970s and 1980s with his own marketing firm, Regis McKenna, Inc., founded in 1970. McKenna retired from consulting in 2000 and is concentrating his efforts on high tech entrepreneurial seed-ventures...
Group, Moore was a sales and marketing executive at Rand Information Systems, Enhansys, and Mitem. He is currently a Venture Partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures and Managing Director of TCG Advisors.
Moore received a bachelor's degree in American literature from Stanford University (1967) and a doctorate in English literature from the University of Washington (1974).
Moore began his professional life as an English professor at Olivett College in Michigan, before moving his family to California where he took a job as a corporate trainer and executive assistant at a technology company. His initial jobs in sales and marketing at three software firms ended with all firms ending in bankruptcy.
Moore and his wife Marie have three adult children, Margaret, Michael and Anna.
Paradigms
Contributions to the Technology Adoption Life Cycle and the High Tech Marketing ModelOne of Moore's key insights is that as one progresses through the technology adoption life cycle used as a model for high tech marketing, there is a credibility gap that occurs in trying to move on through the adoption segments outlined below.
His major contribution in the field is the 'chasm' that separates the early market and early adopter visionaries from the early pragmatists when confronted with discontinuous innovations. The various groups or segments or profiles adopt innovations in stages based on their unique psycho-graphic profiles (a combination of psychological, demographic, and social attributes).
Moore defines the early market as being made up of technology enthusiasts and innovators who are looking for state of the art technology and try innovations out just to see if they will work. These lone technical inventors usually don't have any buying influence in organizations so must be seeded with products so they may be used as references for the next profile in the early market.
That would be the visionary early adopters who are change agents looking for an order of magnitude improvement or fundamental breakthrough or quantum leap in competitive advantage in the way business is conducted.
The next segment in the technology adoption life cycle are the early pragmatists who do not trust visionaries as a reference base, and act like herd animals in the adoption of innovations, so are very reference or support oriented. So this creates a catch-22 since the only references that an early pragmatists will use is another pragmatists that is in their industry.
The chasm is a drastic lull in market development that occurs after the visionary market is saturated and pragmatists will not buy into a discontinuous technology unless they can reference other pragmatists, thus the catch 22. Pragmatists dependent exclusively on references from others in their own industry and are highly support oriented
Moore uses a metaphorical bowling alley where one targets vertical industry market segments with broken mission critical business processes in order to penetrate this low risk product. If a popular app is found while these pragmatist are adopting as pins in a bowling alley a tornado of demand may develop where late pragmatists adopt en masses.
If enough of the technical complexity is designed out of the product the next adoption group, the conservatives on main street may adopt if they trust in a pragmatist reference base.
Finally there are the straggling skeptics who will only buy into a technology product if it is say, a microprocessor buried in the braking system of the pick up truck they are driving.
Managing for Shareholder value through Competitive Advantage GAP and Competitive Advantage Period CAP
GAP is a term used in investment analysis that interprets a company's current reported revenue and margin performance as a gauge of the competitive separation it currently enjoys in its target markets.
CAP refers to estimates of the length of time an investor believes a company can maintain a differentiated position that creates competitive separation.
The Jungle and the Royal Court
Moore defines the market share pecking order resulting from category outcomes in terms of the 'proprietariness' of the technology that an offering has embedded.
In an hierarchy resulting from the jungle scenario the pecking order is set firm in its place once established. The gorilla is the market-share leader whose position is sustained by proprietary technology that has high switching costs, leading to both high GAP and long CAP, the marks of exceptional shareholder value for the company. The chimp's market share position is subordinate to the gorilla in a market where both vendors have proprietary technology that is incompatible with the other's. To survive, chimps must typically create strongholds in niche markets where they are the local market leader or 'gorilla in the niche'. A monkey company has little to no market share in a category dominated by a gorilla, its strategy is to reproduce the gorilla's in-market offering as best it can and sell it at a substantial discount.
In the royal court scenario the roles of king, prince and serf are fluid throughout the life of the category in question. The king is the market share leader whose position is sustained primarily by execution. Compared to gorillas kings typically have equally high GAPs but, because they can be more readily swapped out, significantly shorter CAPs, resulting in lower shareholder value. The prince is a market-share challenger whose position is sustained primarily by execution as opposed to proprietary technology with high switching costs. Compared to chimps, princes have fare more volatile CAPs because they have the opportunity to displace kings as the market leader but also the vulnerability of being displaced by some another would be prince. The serf is a market share also-ran in a market with low switching costs, serfs enter and exit product categories opportunistically based on short lived offer power advantages. They are the ultimate commoditizing force. Compared to monkeys, serfs have lower barriers to entry as there is no proprietary technology to clone.
Core and Context
Core is any activity that cretes sustainable differentiation in the target market resulting in premium prices or increased volume. Core management seeks to dramatically outperform all competitors within the domain of core.
Context is any activity that does not differentiate the company from the customer's viewpoint in the target market. Context management seeks to meet , but not exceed, appropriate accepted standards in a productive a manner as possible.
Books
- Crossing the ChasmCrossing the ChasmCrossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers or simply Crossing the Chasm , is a marketing book by Geoffrey A. Moore that focuses on the specifics of marketing high tech products during the early start up period...
: Marketing and Selling High-tech Products to Mainstream Customers (1991, revised 1999) - ISBN 0-06-051712-3 - Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge (1995) revised as Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets (2004) - ISBN 0-88730-824-4
- The Gorilla Game: An Investor's Guide to Picking Winners in High Technology (with Paul Johnson and Tom Kippola, 1998) revised as The Gorilla Game : Picking Winners in High Technology (1999)
- Living on the Fault Line : Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Internet (2000), revised as Living on the Fault Line, Revised Edition: Managing for Shareholder Value in Any Economy (2002)
- Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution (2005)
- Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past (2011)