In his book, Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore shows a model that dissects and represents the stages of adoption of high-tech products. The model goes through five stages based on the psychographic features of customers at each stage: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard.

Why is the technology adoption life cycle useful?

There is a peculiar phase in the life cycle of a high-tech product that Moore calls a “chasm.” This is the phase in which a product is getting used by early adopters, but not yet by an early majority.

In that stage, there is a wide gap between those two psychographic profiles. Indeed, many startups fail because they don’t manage to have the early majority pick up where the early adopters left.

Understanding the technology adoption of a product helps you assess in which stage is a product and when the chasm is close to how to fill the gap and allow the early majority to pick up the void left by the early adopters.

That void is created when the early adopters are ready to leave a product that is about to go mainstream. The market is plenty of examples of companies trying to conquer the early majority but failed in doing so, and in the process also lost the enthusiasts that made that product successful in the first place.

Related: Business Strategy: Definition, Examples, And Case Studies

Crossing the Chasm with Seth Godin

In a blog post entitled attention vs. the chasm, Seth Godin highlighted:

One way they’re thinking about it:Attention is the new innovation.I don’t agree…

…Moore’s Crossing the Chasm helped marketers see that while innovation was the tool to reach the small group of early adopters and opinion leaders, it was insufficient to reach the masses. Because the masses don’t want something that’s new, they want something thatworks, something that others are using, something that actually solves their productivity and community problems.

…Early adopters are thrilled by the new. They seek innovation.

…Everyone else is wary of failure. They seek trust.

What are the stages of a technology adoption life cycle?

The stages of a technology adoption life cycle, it comprises five main psychographic profiles:

• Innovators
• Early Adopters
• Early Majority
• Late Majority
• and Laggards

Innovators 

Early Adopters 

Late Majority 

Laggards

Other factors influencing technological adoption

One of my favorite authors is Jared Diamond, a polymath which knowledge goes beyond books, education or instruction. In fact, Jared Diamond is an ecologist, geographer, biologist, anthropologist.

Whatever you want to label him, the truth is Jared Diamond is just one of the most curious people on earth. As we love to put a label on anything, we get impressed by as many labels one person has. 

However, Jared Diamond has been just a curious person looking for answers to compelling and hard questions about our civilization. The search for those answers has brought him to become an expert in many disciplines. 

In fact, even though he might not know what’s the latest news about Google‘s algorithm update, Apple’s latest product launch or what features the new iPhone has, I believe Jared Diamond is the most equipped person to understand how the technological landscape evolves. The reason being Jared Diamond has been looking at historical trends in thousands of years and dozens of cultures and civilizations.

He’s also lived for short periods throughout his life with small populations, like New Guineans. In his book Guns, Germs & Steel there is an excerpt that tries to explain why western civilizations were so technologically successful and advanced compared to any other population in the world, say New Guinea.

For many in the modern, hyper-technological world, the answer seems trivial. With the advent of the digital world, even more. We love to read and get inspired every day by the incredible stories of geniuses and successful entrepreneurs that are changing the world.

Jared Diamond has a different explanation for how technology evolves and what influences its adoption throughout history, and it has only in part of doing with the ability to make something that works better than what existed before.

Why the heroic theory of invention is flawed

If you read the accounts of many entrepreneurs that have influenced our modern society, those seem to resemble the stories of heroes, geniuses, and original thinkers. In short, if we didn’t have Edison, Watt, Ford, and Carnegie the western world wouldn’t have been so wildly successful. For how much we love this theory, that doesn’t seem to resemble history.

True, those people were in a way ahead of their times. They were geniuses, risk-takers and in some cases mavericks. However, were they the only ones able to advance our society? That is not the case.

Assuming those people were isolated geniuses able to come up with the unimaginable; if the culture around hadn’t been able to acknowledge those inventions, we wouldn’t have traces as of now of those discoveries. So what influenced technological adoption?

The four macro patterns of technological adoption

According to Jared Diamond, there are four patterns to look at when looking for technological adoption:

1. a relative economical advantage with existing technology
2. social value and prestige
3. compatibility with vested interests
4. the ease with which those advantages can be observed

The relative economic advantage with existing technology

The first point seems obvious. In fact, one technology to win over the other doesn’t have just to be better; but way more effective. To think of a recent example, when Google took off the search industry. When Google got into the search industry, it was not the first player. It was a latecomer. Yet its algorithm, PageRank, was so superior to its competition that it quickly took off.

What’s next?

Social value and prestige

This is less intuitive. In fact, for how much we love to think of ourselves as rational creatures, in reality, we might be way more social than we’re rational. Thus, social value and prestige of a technological innovation play as much a key role in its adoption as its innovative aspects.

Think about Apple’s products. Apple follows a business model that can be defined as a razor and blade business model. In short, the company attracts users on its platform, iTunes or Apple Store by selling music or apps for a convenient price, while selling its iPhones at very high margins.

However, it is undeniable that what makes Apple able to sell its computers and phones at a higher price compared to competitors is the brand the company was able to build over the years. In short, as of the time of this writing, Apple still represents a status quo that makes the company highly profitable.

Compatibility with vested interests

In Jared Diamond‘s book, Germs, Guns & Steel to prove this point he uses the story of the QWERTY keyboard. This is the keyboard most probably you’re using right now on your mobile device or computer. It is called in this way because its first left-most six letters form the name “QWERTY.”

Have you ever wondered why do you use this standard? You might think this has to do with efficiency. But instead, that is the opposite. This standard has been invented at the end of the 1800s when typewriters became the standard.

When typists were typing too fast those (page 248 of Germs, Guns & Steel) typewriters jammed. In short, they came up with a system that was thought to slow down typists so that typewriters wouldn’t get jammed anymore. Yet as the more than a century went by and we started to use computers, and mobile devices instead of switching to a more efficient system we kept the old one. Why?

According to Jared Diamond, the most compelling reason for not being able to switch to a new standard was the vested interests of small lobbies of typists, typing teachers, typewriter and computer salespeople.

The ease with which those advantages can be observed

When a technological advancement can be easily recognized as the fruit of the success of an organization, country or enterprise, it will be adopted by anyone that wants to keep up with it. Think, for instance, about two countries going to war. One of them has a secret weapon that makes them win the war.

As soon as the enemy that lost the battle finds that out, next time that weapon will also be adopted by the losing side. Think also of another more recent example. As big data has become a secret technological weapon used by Obama to win his electoral campaign. So Trump has used it to take over his competitors during the last US political campaign.

Now that we know what are the four macro patterns of technological adoption and how the technology adoption curve might work it might be easier for you to cross the chasm!

Handpicked related articles: 

• The Power of Google Business Model in a Nutshell
• How Does Google Make Money? It’s Not Just Advertising!
• Ok Google, Are You In Search Of A Business Model For Voice?
• The Future of Google: The Curse of Engineers Become Advertisers
• When The AI Meets Users’ Intent, Google Takes A Cut On Every Sale On Earth
• How Does DuckDuckGo Make Money? DuckDuckGo Business Model Explained
• Who Owns Google? Under The Hood Of The Tech Giant That Conquered The Web
• The Google of China: Baidu Business Model In A Nutshell
• How Does Twitter Make Money? Twitter Business Model In A Nutshell
• How Amazon Makes Money: Amazon Business Model in a Nutshell

• How Does Netflix Make Money? Netflix Business Model Explained