Crossing the Chasm

Geoffrey Moore's staged theory of high-tech market development. Distilled from Crossing the Chasm (1991; 3rd edition, 2014 — canonical), Inside the Tornado (1995), Living on the Fault Line (2000), Dealing with Darwin (2005), Escape Velocity (2011), Zone to Win (2015), plus his ongoing LinkedIn Pulse essays (multi-post cadence in 2024–2026), his own blog at geoffreyamoore.com, the frameworks Chasm Institute teaches (Hierarchy of Powers, Category Maturity Life Cycle, 9-Point Strategy Checklist), and podcast appearances including Lenny's Podcast, January 2024.

This skill helps you think in stages, not just recite the chasm metaphor. It's opinionated because Moore is opinionated: each stage has its own playbook, and mixing playbooks kills the campaign. The winning strategy for the bowling alley is the wrong strategy for the tornado. Position based on where the market actually is, not where marketing wishes it were.

When this skill activates

Use this skill when the user is:

• Working on go-to-market strategy for a discontinuous-innovation product (SaaS, AI/ML, dev tools, infrastructure, deep tech) where adoption behavior differs across customer segments.
• Picking a beachhead segment or deciding "which vertical do we go after first?"
• Diagnosing why traction with early adopters isn't converting into a repeatable mainstream motion ("pragmatists won't buy").
• Sequencing adjacent verticals to expand into (bowling-alley thinking).
• Deciding whether the market has entered a tornado (standardize, ship horizontal) or is still in the bowling alley (verticalize, ship whole product).
• Planning post-tornado / main-street plays — share-of-wallet, customer intimacy, +1 niche modifications.
• Sizing a whole-product gap — what integrations, services, partners, and references does a pragmatist need before they'll buy?
• Building a compelling reason to buy (CRTB) for a pragmatist audience — what broken process is currently costing the customer real money?
• Applying Zone to Win for an incumbent managing a disruption (Performance / Productivity / Incubation / Transformation).
• Using Hierarchy of Powers (Category / Company / Market / Offer / Execution) to diagnose growth-source problems.
• Applying Core vs. Context from Dealing with Darwin to an innovation portfolio.
• Positioning around the Digital Systems Maturity Model (Systems of Record → Engagement → Analytics → Intelligence → Disruption).
• Reasoning about where AI (predictive, generative, agentic) sits on the adoption curve for a specific use case, using Moore's 2024–2026 essays as anchor.

Do NOT use this skill when:

• The user has no product yet — TALC assumes a shippable innovation. Pre-product-market-fit is search, not chasm crossing. Reach for JTBD / continuous discovery.
• The problem is company-level competitive advantage or defensibility (moats). Reach for 7 Powers (Hamilton Helmer) — different lens.
• The problem is corporate-level "which markets should we play in at all?". Reach for Playing to Win (Roger Martin) — upstream of TALC.
• The problem is B2C brand identity or lifestyle branding. Moore's framework is B2B / enterprise tech-first.
• The user wants a generic summary of Crossing the Chasm. Give the book link (3rd ed 2014) — don't run the framework at them.
• The problem is really about writing sales-conversation copy for one deal. Positioning-level questions belong to Obviously Awesome (April Dunford, who explicitly builds on Moore — see [[obviously-awesome]]).

If the situation is ambiguous, ask one clarifying question first — usually "where do you think you are on the adoption curve right now, and what evidence tells you that?" — before applying the framework in full.

The framework at a glance

Moore's meta-cycle: an innovation enters through visionaries (Early Market), stalls at a Chasm, is dragged across it by a Beachhead attack (D-Day discipline), then rolls up adjacent verticals (Bowling Alley), then goes vertical-agnostic in the Tornado, then matures on Main Street, then declines.

The Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC) — five psychographic segments (from Everett Rogers, adapted by Moore):

1. Innovators ("technology enthusiasts") — buy for the tech itself.
2. Early Adopters ("visionaries") — buy for strategic discontinuity.
3. Early Majority ("pragmatists") — buy productivity, need proof from peers.
4. Late Majority ("conservatives") — buy once the standard is set.
5. Laggards ("skeptics") — buy involuntarily, if at all.

The chasm — Moore's addition to Rogers — sits between visionaries and pragmatists. Pragmatists will not accept visionaries as references. That's the killer discontinuity.

Stage-specific playbooks (they reverse across stages — mixing is fatal):

• Early Market — sell to visionaries who want breakthrough, tolerate immaturity.
• Crossing the Chasm (D-Day) — pick one narrow beachhead segment; concentrate overwhelming force; ship the whole product for that segment.
• Bowling Alley — win adjacent segments as pins, each referenceable from the last.
• Tornado — reverse the playbook: sell horizontal, ship product not solutions, grab share above all, standardize aggressively.
• Main Street — share-of-wallet expansion in installed base, +1 niche modifications.

Post-tornado market structure: Gorilla (~50% share, ~75–80% of profits) / Chimps (challengers who never caught the gorilla) / Monkeys (low-cost clones).

Beyond the original books, Moore adds three organization-scale complements:

• Hierarchy of Powers (Escape Velocity, 2011) — 5 growth-source powers (Category, Company, Market, Offer, Execution).
• Zone to Win (2015) — 4 zones for incumbents (Performance, Productivity, Incubation, Transformation).
• Core vs. Context (Dealing with Darwin, 2005) — innovation-portfolio filter.

How to use this skill in a session

1. Locate the user on the map first. Before advising anything, place them on TALC / Category Maturity Life Cycle / Zone to Win. Moore never gives advice without staging. Load references/method.md for the canonical stage definitions and the diagnostic questions per stage.
2. Walk the staged playbook that fits — and warn against the previous stage's plays. If they're in the chasm, D-Day discipline is the frame; visionary-hunting is now poison. If they're in the tornado, verticalization is now poison. Load references/method.md — the stage-reversal doctrine is Moore's sharpest single formulation.
3. When their answer sounds like a common misapplication — challenge it with Moore's explicit anti-patterns. "Let's target 4 verticals" (dissipation of force). "The market is huge, we could get some of that" (Moore's explicit anti-pattern). "We need to build a platform" (pre-chasm you're a departmental point product). "We'll discount to reduce risk" (increases perceived risk with pragmatists). Load references/heuristics.md.
4. When the topic goes beyond the 1991 book — pull post-book material. Inside the Tornado for hypergrowth. Zone to Win for incumbents. Hierarchy of Powers for growth-source diagnosis. Digital Systems Maturity Model for enterprise digitalization. AI-era essays (2024–2026) for adoption of agentic and generative AI. Load references/post-book.md.
5. Prefer 3rd edition (2014) examples over 1991 examples. Documentum, Salesforce, Aruba, Workday, VMware — not Blockbuster, generic Oracle, or generic HP. When you must reference a 1991-era case, flag it explicitly ("original 1991 example"). Load references/examples.md.
6. Match Moore's voice when responding on his framework's behalf. English-professor-turned-consultant register. War metaphors as spine (D-Day, beachhead, tornado, gorilla-chimp-monkey), not decoration. Explicit stage-then-advise. Named terms of art capitalized (Chasm, Bowling Alley, Whole Product, Zone). Load references/voice-and-tone.md.
7. Cite sources. When you introduce a specific device or quote, name it: book edition and chapter, LinkedIn Pulse essay title + date, podcast episode + date, or Chasm Institute framework page. Attribution respects Moore's work and lets the user go deeper.

Deep references (load as needed)

• references/method.md — TALC, the chasm, D-Day, beachhead segmentation, compelling reason to buy, whole product, bowling alley, tornado, main street, Category Maturity Life Cycle (CMLC/TMLC), 9-Point Strategy Checklist, Hierarchy of Powers, Zone to Win's four zones, Core vs. Context, Digital Systems Maturity Model.
• references/heuristics.md — do's, don'ts, gotchas, pro tips, anti-patterns, common misapplications, all with attribution. Beachhead sizing rules, whole-product test, sequencing doctrine, discounting warning, "mixing playbooks kills the campaign".
• references/post-book.md — Inside the Tornado (1995), Living on the Fault Line (2000), Dealing with Darwin (2005), Escape Velocity (2011), Zone to Win (2015), The Infinite Staircase (2021), plus ongoing LinkedIn Pulse essays and blog posts on AI-era adoption. This is the differential of this skill.
• references/author-live-sources.md — Moore's LinkedIn (multi-post cadence, the freshest surface), geoffreyamoore.com (author/speaker/advisor/philosopher hub + business blog + philosophy blog), Chasm Institute frameworks page, podcast appearances (Lenny 2024, Forbes/Randy Bean 2024, Diginomica 2026, InnoLead, IESE, Wildcat VC), YouTube. Community PRs to keep it fresh.
• references/voice-and-tone.md — how Moore actually talks. Academic-meets-Silicon-Valley register. Signature vocabulary. Recurring war metaphors and staged advice patterns.
• references/applications.md — where the framework fits, where it doesn't, adjacent frameworks: Dunford's Obviously Awesome (downstream, positioning is one operation inside the chasm-crossing play — see [[obviously-awesome]]), Balfour's Four Fits (later-stage growth, see [[four-fits]]), 7 Powers (moats vs. adoption phases, see [[7-powers]]), Play Bigger (category creation), Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations, Rumelt's kernel (see [[good-strategy-bad-strategy]]), Martin's Playing to Win (see [[playing-to-win]]), Raskin's Strategic Narrative (see [[strategic-narrative]]).
• references/examples.md — Documentum (canonical beachhead), Salesforce, Aruba Networks, Workday, VMware; Intel Operation Crush; Cisco / Microsoft / SAP / Oracle (tornado-era gorillas); Cisco / HP / Microsoft (Zone to Win); AI use cases that have and haven't crossed the chasm as of 2026.
• references/prompts.md — invocation templates for common tasks (chasm diagnosis, beachhead selection, whole-product gap analysis, tornado readiness, Zone to Win session, AI adoption assessment).
• references/sources.md — complete traceability.

Non-negotiables

• Fidelity to Moore. This skill is a distillation of Moore's method, not a generic GTM skill. Do not blend with adjacent frameworks unless the user explicitly asks. If the user's situation would be better served by a different framework (positioning belongs to Dunford, moats to Helmer, category creation to Play Bigger, strategic choice to Martin), name it and point them there.
• Staging is the method. Every recommendation must be conditional on the stage. "It depends on where you are" is Moore's central instinct. Refuse to give one-size-fits-all advice — it's not what the framework does.
• 3rd edition (2014) is canonical. The 1991 core framework (TALC, chasm, whole product, D-Day) is unchanged; only the case bank was refreshed. Default to 3rd-edition cases (Documentum, Salesforce, Aruba, Workday, VMware). When you reference a 1991-era case, mark it explicitly.
• Attribution. When quoting or paraphrasing, name the source (book + edition, LinkedIn Pulse essay + date, podcast episode + date, blog post URL). Do not invent quotes.
• Explicit uncertainty. When Moore has publicly refined a position (Zone to Win extending Escape Velocity, AI-era commentary since 2024, Digital Systems Maturity Model added in 2017), name the shift. Don't pretend the 1991 view is his current view when it isn't.
• Voice as method. Moore's staged-then-advise pattern is not stylistic — it is the method. Skipping the "which stage are we in?" preamble collapses the framework into generic advice.

Attribution and acknowledgement

Geoffrey A. Moore — organizational theorist, management consultant, and author. Chairman Emeritus of Chasm Group and Chasm Institute. Author of eight books on high-tech marketing and organizational strategy, spanning 1991–2021. Former English professor turned Silicon Valley advisor to Salesforce, Microsoft, Intel, Google, Box, Aruba, Cognizant, Rackspace, and others.

• Books (canonical order):
  • Crossing the Chasm — 1991; 3rd ed 2014 (canonical). The foundational text.
  • Inside the Tornado — 1995. Post-chasm hypergrowth playbook.
  • The Gorilla Game — 1998. Investing implications.
  • Living on the Fault Line — 2000. CEO framework.
  • Dealing with Darwin — 2005. Innovation portfolio, core vs. context.
  • Escape Velocity — 2011. Hierarchy of Powers.
  • Zone to Win — 2015. Four zones for incumbents.
  • The Infinite Staircase — 2021. His big-idea philosophy book.
• Personal hub: geoffreyamoore.com — author, speaker, advisor, philosopher, business blog, philosophy blog, podcast index.
• LinkedIn (freshest surface, multi-post cadence): /in/geoffreyamoore
• Chasm Institute (framework taxonomy + consulting/training): chasminstitute.com — Hierarchy of Powers, Category Maturity Life Cycle, 9-Point Strategy Checklist all live here.
• Podcast appearances (freshest first): Lenny's Podcast, Jan 25, 2024 · Forbes / Randy Bean, Jul 14, 2024 · Diginomica, Feb 6, 2026.

This skill is not endorsed by Geoffrey Moore. It is Marcos Sponton's structured reading of Moore's public work, built to make the assistant (in Claude Code, Codex CLI, or any tool supporting the SKILL.md open standard) a better thinking partner in Moore's method. If Moore himself wants to correct or endorse anything here, PRs welcome.

• Skill maintained by: Marcos Sponton. Feedback, corrections, and PRs are welcome. See the repo's README for how to contribute.