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

Geoffrey A. Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999

The bestselling guide to the high-stakes world of high tech--now in paperback! Exploring the new high-tech landscape and its implications for business strategy, Geoffrey Moore provides highly useful guidelines for moving products beyond early adopters and into the lucrative mainstream market. From marketing to overall business strategy, Inside the Tornado is a must-read for anyone in the high-tech business.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; 1 edition (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887308244
• ISBN-13: 978-0887308246
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,414,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Managing Director, Geoffrey Moore Consulting
Venture Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
Chairman Emeritus, TCG Advisors, Chasm Institute, and Chasm Group
Member of the Board of Directors, Akamai Technologies and several pre-IPO Companies

Geoffrey Moore is an author, speaker and business advisor to many of the leading companies in the high-tech sector, including Cisco, Cognizant, Compuware, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and Yahoo!.

Geoffrey divides his time between consulting on strategy and transformation challenges with senior executives and speaking internationally on those same topics. His latest book Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past, keeps this intent in mind and is the result of his years of experience working with large enterprises.

Escape Velocity is Moore's sixth book for business leaders in the high-tech sector. His first book, Crossing the Chasm, which addresses the challenges of gaining initial adoption for disruptive innovations, continues to be a best seller and required reading in business schools and entrepreneurship curricula. Moore wrote four subsequent books which addressed the challenges faced by management when competing in hyper-growth markets (Inside the Tornado) and those faced by investors when managing a high-tech stock portfolio (The Gorilla Game). The two additional books both address the organizational challenges faced by established enterprises, in one case posed by the volatility of the technology sector overall (Living on the Fault Line), in the other by the need to reignite innovation in mature franchises (Dealing with Darwin). Escape Velocity rounds out these efforts in service to established enterprises by laying out a comprehensive program for engaging with next-generation trends while maintaining their core franchises.

Moore is an active public speaker who gives between 30 and 60 speeches per year, split roughly evenly between industry events and company-specific meetings. His speaking practice is global, addressing a spectrum of topics of interest to the high-tech sector, including high-tech market dynamics, business strategies, innovation, organizational development, and industry futures.

Earlier in his career, he was a principal and partner at Regis McKenna, Inc., a leading high tech marketing strategy and communications company, and for the decade prior, a sales and marketing executive in the software industry. He has a bachelor's degree from Stanford and a doctorate from the University of Washington, both in English Literature.

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 HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format: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

Format: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

Format: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.