Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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

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.

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.

Inside the Tornado is the 1995 sequel to the 1991 book, Crossing the Chasm. Inside the Tornado repeats the arguments of Crossing the Chasm, and adds three new stages of how to manage a business during the lifecycle of a technology. While Crossing the Chasm was primarily about marketing with some strategy emphasis, this book reverses the emphasis. I recommend the 1999 paperback version because it contains a new introduction that serves better as a helpful afterword to the book, as Mr. Moore suggests, in updating it for the Internet.

In Crossing the Chasm, Mr. Moore successfully argues that new technologies first attract customers who love technology, and will try anything. If you succeed with that group, you will next attract visionary customers who will want to use the technology to steal a march on their competitors. After that comes the chasm, getting into broad acceptance. Many technologies never make it. The method to cross is described in Inside the Tornade as the bowling alley. You pick a few key segments that may reflect the needs of other segments. By providing custom solutions for these segments, you create a ricochet effect into striking good solutions for other niches. The analogy is to the way that after the bowling ball first hits the one and three pins (for right handers) and then continues on to take out the five pin, those three pins hit the pins behind them, which in turn go backward to take out the pins in the final row, until you have a strike.

The tornado is the period of mass market acceptance. This is when there is a lot of demand as everyone who decides about infrastructure adopts the new standard simultaneously. You have to standardize, get your costs down, and ship at low prices. Your strategy is just the opposite of the bowling alley period. The metaphor here is to the tornado in the Wizard of Oz that sweeps Dorothy, Toto, and her house from Kansas to Oz.

Then comes Main Street, when the market demand is now filled and you are looking at "aftermarket development, when the base infrastructure has been deployed and the goal now is to flesh out its potential." You once again focus on segments, and create custom solutions.

The final period is End of Life, when "wholly new paradigms come to market and supplant the leaders who themselves had only just arrived." In essence, you start a new technology cycle. The best companies (like Intel) will do this to themselves.

The book also describes the importance of becoming the gorilla who will have about 50 percent market share and earn 75-80 percent of industry profits as a result of dominating the tornado period. Gorillas are made during the tornado. Oracle is described as an example.

During the bowling alley your company needs to be very good at product leadership and customer intimacy, during the tornado you need to shift to product leadership combined with operational excellence, and in Main Street the focus is on operational excellence and customer intimacy. This thinking will remind you of the book, The Discipline of Market Leaders, and the work of Dr. Adizes. Most companies will not be agile enough to make these transitions. Examples abound in the book. Apple's example will hit home with you, I'm sure.

As to the Internet, things are different. In the original book, the Internet is only mentioned three times. In the introduction here, Mr. Moore says that the "Internet market tornado, however, is so powerful that it has sucked all four models into its vortex." Companies are succeeding simultaneously in different parts of the Internet space at the same time with each of the strategies outlined here.

In the future, I think technologies will evolve more like the Internet has. During these evolutions, I think that business model discontinuities will be more important than technology discontinuities. While you can only put technology discontinuities in during parts of the cycle (never during the tornado), business model shifts can occur at any stage. Also, it is easier to shift business models than to shift technologies. Business model shifts affect your own operations more than customers, while technologies have a large impact on customers. My current work is focused on how the two need to interact with one another, which is not addressed here.

After you have read this excellent book, I suggest that you consider the organizational planning issues required to create such a multi-faceted effectiveness. For example, you may find it easier to have two organizations. One will focus on creating custom solutions, while another focuses on mass market solutions. In that way, you can hedge your bets with predicting the timing of each phase.

May you always focus your attention on the most important activities required by the markets you serve!

Granted I haven't yet read the predecessor to this book, Crossing the Chasm, but this is the best business book I have read focusing on the external aspects of business. Most business books focus internally - what you and/or your company needs to do. This book takes the approach that what one does has a dependency on what's going on with the market.

The market, as defined in Crossing the Chasm, and repeated here, is divided into five sections/phases - Innovators (techies), Early Adopters (visionaries), Early Majority (pragmatists), Late Majority (conservatives), and Laggards (skeptics). Each of these groups has it's own needs that must be addressed. The predecessor deals with the "chasm" between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority. This book focuses on the tornado that occurs when a company/product gains traction with the Early Majority.

This book also borrows the concepts of "value disciplines" from "The Discipline of Market Leaders" and applies it to the various sections. There are three, somewhat mutually exclusive, disciplines - product leadership, operational excellence, and customer intimacy. It shows how initially the keys to success are focusing on product leadership and customer intimacy. Then, in the tornado, product leadership and operational excellence are key. Then, on main street, operational excellence and customer intimacy are critical.

The big challenge for people and for companies is, as with a manual transmission, shifting gears. This book does a fantastic job of explaining the changes needed at the different times, as well as how to determine when one reaches those times.

I found Moore's descriptions of the phases of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC) very useful:

o Early Market: time of great excitement when customers are technology enthusiasts

o Chasm: early-market interest wanes

o Bowling Alley: Niche-based adoption in advance of general marketplace

o Tornado: mass-market adoption

o Main Street: aftermarket development

o End of Life: leaders are supplanted by new paradigms/technology

The individual chapters on The Bowling Alley, Inside the Tornado, and On Main Street were full of company examples and useful advice and warnings.

The last chapter on Organization Leadership which described the types of recruiting and management talent appropriate for each stage of the TALC contains very valuable advice.

However, I found the gorilla, monkey and chimp metaphors silly and tedious (I had trouble remembering which animal symbolized what). Surely Moore could have found a more descriptive way of indicating the strengths and strategies of the competitors during each of the phases of the TALC.

Primates aside, I will keep this book and add it to my library of professional marketing reference sources. It's worth picking up from time to time to re-read specific sections to refresh your memory. When you're in the "tornado" you won't have time for this kind of reading, so read it now!

I liked reading this book. I did not read his previous "chasm" book but it sounds like I don't need to. The author says that the first few chapters of this book are a rehash of the previous book. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars because after reading 80% of it I just stopped. I felt like the point was made and I didn't need to hear any more. This is kind of the feeling I get when I read Tom Peters as well.

This book is about how high tech entrepreneurs can create and execute marketing strategies that work. Moore introduces a strategic model based on the bell-shaped diffusion curve concept which says that innovations undergo different stages in their course to market leadership. And Moore explains detailed what is necessary to do to gain market dominance. Moore describes this model very realistic and he does not care about typical marketing myths. This model is explained by many examples from successful companies such as Intel, Microsoft and Oracle. This books is one of the very few books in the marketing literature without typical buzz words, simplifications or exaggerations.

Crossing the Chasm (1991) and Inside the Tornado (1995) should be read in combination. Having just re-read both, I consider them even more valuable now than when they were first published. 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 (especially B2B and, even more importantly, B2B2C) 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." Those who share my high regard for one or both are strongly urged to read Moore's more recent business classic, Living on the Fault Line.

Almost every thing have been said and written about these 2 books ("Crossing the chasm" and "Inside the tornado"). These are really about the best business books ever, but I would like to add one point :

This book is compulsory reading for IT consultants and system integrators, without it, you will never understand how to manage your technology "partners" (or why they treat you so poorly !). Once you will have read it, you will understand their goal, their lifecycle and your role in that game. If you deal with the SAP, Siebel and Oracle of the world (the gorrilas), you will start to decipher their strategy.