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.

Biography

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.

Moore and his wife Marie have three adult children, Margaret, Michael and Anna.

Paradigms

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 creates 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

See also

References

External links

Category:American business theorists Category:American business writers Category:Business speakers Category:Living people Category:1946 births