What is the chasm in the technology adoption lifecycle?

Is the innovation disruptive?

Dsruptive innovation vs. Continuous innovation

• Whether it ==changes our current mode of behavior== or to ==modify other products and services we rely on==.
• Between continuous and discontinuous lies a spectrum of demands for behavioral change.

High-tech industries introduce disruptive innovation routinely, during which people are converted into customers by following a pattern of normal distribution. The product's user growth follows an S-curve.

When will people buy a high-tech product?

Disruptive innovation's customers are converted at different stages in ==the technology adoption life cycle==. They are...

1. Innovators
2. Early adopters
3. Early majority (pragmatists)
4. Late majority (conservatives)
5. Laggards

Segment	What They Want
Innovators	novel, cool and experimental things
Early Adopters	gaining advantages or getting products before others
Early Majority	proven ROI, instant access, low transition costs, support available
Late Majority	adopting as minimal as possible or only when everyone else has adopted
Laggards	avoidance to adopt new things

What is the high tech marketing model?

This cycle provides guidance of the ==high tech marketing model: the way to develop a high-tech market is to work the curve left to right, focusing on each group one by one,== because groups on the left promote products for the right ones in a momentum.

Momentum is vital because it can

1. save costs
2. make it fast so you won’t miss the window of opportunity before next disruption or competitor

Where is the CHASM?

Inspecting into the technology adoption lifecycle, we can see

• two cracks

  1. Beneficial usage crack between innovators and early adopters. E.g., Esperanto, VRML, second life, 3D printing. To cross this, we need a flagship application.
  2. Competent majority crack, between early and late majorities. E.g., home automation.scanning and project management software. To cross this, we need to make it easier to adopt.

• and one CHASM

  1. Early adopter-to-majority chasm. Because their needs are different

     1. Early adopter is buying a change agent - they expect to get a jump on the competition. Having bugs is fine.
     2. The pragmatic early majority is buying a productivity improvement. They want technology to ==enhance, not overthrow, the established ways of doing business==.

  2. The compatibility above leads to two key points

     1. early adopters do not make good references for the early majority
     2. And because of the early majority’s concern not to disrupt their organizations, good references are critical to their buying decisions.

  3. Who did fall into the early adopter-to-majority chasm in 2014? E.g., holograms, pen-based tablets, fuel cells, QR codes (in the US), Massive Open Online Courses, Segways, Motorola iridium.