Geoffrey A. Moore

Geoffrey A. Moore is an American business author and consultant whose Crossing the Chasm became essential reading for technology companies navigating early-market growth.

Geoffrey A. Moore published Crossing the Chasm in 1991, and while the specific technology examples in the original edition have aged, the framework it describes has remained one of the most practically useful models in technology marketing. Moore’s core insight is that the innovation adoption curve contains a critical discontinuity — a “chasm” — between the early adopters who embrace new technology enthusiastically and the pragmatic early majority who need proven solutions before committing. Most tech companies fail not from poor technology but from an inability to bridge that gap.

Moore’s prescription is specific and counter-intuitive: rather than expanding broadly after early adoption, companies should narrow their focus dramatically, targeting a single beachhead segment where they can dominate completely before using that foothold to expand. The military metaphor of the D-Day invasion — concentrated force at a specific point, then a breakout — is one of the book’s most memorable and useful illustrations. The framework has been applied across decades of technology cycles and continues to generate recognition in practitioners across the industry.

Crossing the Chasm is primarily a strategic and marketing text, and it asks relatively little of its readers in terms of prose enjoyment — it is functional rather than literary. Some practitioners argue that the framework requires modification for modern platform or SaaS businesses, and Moore has acknowledged that the chasm behaves differently in different market structures. But as a diagnostic for why promising technology companies stall, it remains as relevant as it was at publication.