Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge [Hardcover]

Geoffrey A. Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 1995

"The chasm is where high-tech fortunes are lost... the tornado is where they are made."-- Steve Jobs, Founder & CEO, Next Computer, Inc.

Now, in this fascinating sequel, Moore shows how to capitalize on the profit-rich niches and hyper-growth markets beyond the chasm. Continuing to chart the impact of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, he explores its effects not just on marketing but on overall business planning, especially strategic partnerships, competitive advantage, positioning and organizational leadership.

Moore's most startling lesson is: "As markets move from stage to stage in the Life Cycle, the winning strategy does not just change -- it actually reverses the prior strategy. The very skills that you've just perfected become your biggest liabilities; and if you can't put them aside to acquire new ones, then you're in for tough times."

As challenging as this lesson is to apply, Moore leads the way. Using actual examples of cutting-edge firms, he applies the Life Cycle model to all aspects of managing a market-focused business strategy, including how to manage people effectively through each phase of the cycle. There are significant management implications: Chasm-crossers who love the customer intimacy of niches may rebel against the depersonalizing power of the tornado; tornado managers who relish the gales of hyper-growth may resist the inevitable return to the niche, in the guise of mass customization, once the rush to the new paradigm subsides.

All industries relying on technology -- not just computer hardware, software and telecommunications, but entertainment, publishing, broadcasting, banking, insurance, health care, aerospace, defense, utilities,pharmaceuticals and retail -- must master Moore's lessons to see the year 2000. If you are marketing technology-based products or managing the people who do, then you will find yourself "Inside the Tornado.""A must-read for start-up cowboys with delusions of Pixar grandeur, as well as aw-just-one-more-button developers and their reengineer-till-ya-puke overlords in the nice offices upstairs." "--Wired"

"The chasm is where many high-tech fortunes have been lost...the Tornado is where many have been made."--Steve Jobs, CEO, NeXT Computer, Inc.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is Moore's second book expounding his high-tech marketing theories, focusing on what to do when you've followed his advice in Crossing the Chasm so well that customers are beating down your door and crawling in the windows, putting your business into a new lifecycle stage: the mass market.

From Library Journal

Moore (Crossing the Chasm, HarperBusiness, 1991) claims that marketing technology-based products is different from marketing standard consumer products. He explores marketing stages through a discussion of the "Technology Adoption Life Cycle," which follows a product from birth to death and suggests a course of action for each phase. He also charts power distribution within a company and the marketplace as these high-tech companies engage in traditional business strategies (i.e., strategic partnerships, competitive advantage, positioning, and organizational leadership). Moore provides examples from high-tech firms such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Pyramid. Although other recent books address technology marketing (see TechnoBrands, AMACOM, 1991), none addresses life cycle issues. Written for those with a prior knowledge of marketing theory, this book is recommended for business libraries.
Kathy Shimpock-Vieweg, O'Connor-Cavanagh Lib., Phoenix, Ariz.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; 1st edition (October 5, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887307655
• ISBN-13: 978-0887307652
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #845,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Geoffrey Moore is a Managing Director with The Chasm Group, a consulting practice based in California that provides market development and business strategy services to many leading high-technology companies. He is also a Venture Partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures, a California-based venture capital firm specializing in specific technology markets, including e-commerce, internet, enterprise software, networking and semiconductors. As a Venture Partner at Mohr Davidow, he provides market strategy advice to their high-tech portfolio companies. Geoffrey is a frequent speaker and lecturer at industry conferences and his books are required reading at Stanford, Harvard, MIT and other leading business schools.

Geoffrey's current practice focuses on the concepts of his recent book Living on the Fault Line, targeted to CEO's and senior executives of Fortune 500 companies facing the impact of the Internet. Geoffrey's first book, Crossing the Chasm, initially published in 1991, adds compelling new extensions to the classical model of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. He introduces his readers to a gap or ""chasm"" that innovative companies and their products must cross in order to reach the lucrative mainstream market. A revised edition was released in July 1999 to update industries and case-study companies.

The sequel, Inside the Tornado, published in 1995, provides readers with insight into how to capitalize on the potential for hypergrowth beyond the chasm. This second book sorts out how the market forces behind the Technology Adoption Life Cycle demand the need for radical shifts in market strategy.

The Gorilla Game, Geoffrey's third book, was originally released in March of 1998 with a revised version, including a new chapter on internet investing, released August of this year. This book was co-authored with Chasm Group managing partner and high-tech marketing strategist Tom Kippola, and stock investment guru and BancAmerica Robertson Stephens analyst Paul Johnson. The Gorilla Game combines the methodology Moore introduced in Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, with Johnson's stockmarket valuation models and Wall Street expertise, and Kippola's high-tech investment experience.

Geoffrey's most recent book, Living on the Fault Line, focuses on a single theme: How should the management of a public company that rose to prominence prior to the age of the Internet manage for shareholder value now that the Internet is upon us? Living on the Fault Line guides executives and managers who are coping with disruptive technology, destabilizing their core market positions, providing them with new models, metrics, and organizational practices to meet the challenges of the new economy.

Prior to founding The Chasm Group in 1992, Geoffrey was a principal and partner at Regis McKenna, Inc., a leading high-tech marketing strategy and marketing communications company. For the decade prior, he was a sales and marketing executive at three different software companies.

Geoffrey holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, both in literature, and served as an English professor at Olivet College.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Invaluable Guides to E-Commerce, December 28, 1999

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge (Paperback)

Crossing the Chasm (1991) and Inside the Tornado (1995) are most valuable when read in combination. Chasm "is unabashedly about and for marketing within high tech enterprises." It was written for the entire high tech community "to open up the marketing decision making during this [crossing] period so that everyone on the management team can participate in the marketing process." In Chasm, Moore isolates and then corrects what he describes as a "fundamental flaw in the prevailing high-tech marketing model": the notion that rapid mainstream growth could follow continuously on the heels of early market success. In his subsequent book, Inside the Tornado, Moore's use of the "tornado" metaphor correctly suggests that turbulence of unprecedented magnitude has occurred within the global marketplace which the WWW and the Internet have created. Moreover, such turbulence is certain to intensify. Which companies will survive? Why? I have only one (minor) quarrel with the way these two books have been promoted. True, they provide great insights into marketing within the high technology industry. However, in my opinion, all e-commerce (and especially B2B) will be centrally involved in that industry. Moreover, the marketing strategies suggested are relevant to virtually (no pun intended) any organization -- regardless of size or nature -- which seeks to create or increase demand for what it sells...whatever that may be. I consider both books "must reading."ÿ

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Its raining bananas, February 24, 2000

By 

Bhanu Dhir "[e-mail]" (UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inside the Tornado : Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge (Cassette) (Audio Cassette)

This is fantastic. Some simple mataphors: the bowling alley (niche marketing where you pick off segments like pins), tornado (when market demand increases exponentially) and main-street (when the tornado dies down and you need to focus on adding value). Some jungle characters: the gorilla - the company with the greatest market share, the chimps - the apes who wanted to be gorillas but failed and the monkeys - the low cost clone providers.

A wonderful explanation of how it is so easy to get it dead wrong as markets change, dead wrong in strategy, dead wrong in the selection of critical success factors and dead wrong in who you select as your CEO.

Easy to understand and vivid in its descriptions. If you are into high-tech and you want all the bananas get into this now.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You're nuts if you market high-tech without this book, February 22, 2000

By 

J. G. Heiser (Sunninghill, Berks) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge (Paperback)

Moore applies the technology acquisition curve and product life cycle management to the high-tech market, which is characterized by discontinuous innovations (changing paradigms) and market upheavals. He uses actual case studies of high-tech successes and failures to illustrate his model. Effectively utilizing some of the most profound writers in marketing, he weaves in important concepts from Levitt, Davidow, and Treacy & Wiersema.

If you are in high-tech, this is an essential book to read. You might not be in a tornado, but you won't know if you don't read the book. It explains a lot that you won't learn in business school.