Crossing the Chasm in 2025: AI, Disruption, and What Still Holds True with Geoffrey Moore

Crossing the Chasm in 2025: AI, Disruption, and What Still Holds True with Geoffrey Moore

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 238 of the Business Development Podcast, and today we're joined by a true marketing legend Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and advisor to Giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Adobe. We dig deep into innovation, disruption and what it really takes to cross the chasm in today's hyper competitive worlds.

Stick with us. This is an episode you won't wanna miss.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

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Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 238 of the Business Development Podcast, and today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Geoffrey Moore. Geoffrey is a titan in the high tech industry, renowned for his pioneering work in understanding and navigating the complex dynamics of disruptive innovation.

With over three decades of experience, Moore has become the go-to advisor for both ambitious startups and established enterprises seeking to transform their markets. His groundbreaking book, crossing the Chasm revolutionized the way companies approach the daunting task of moving from early adopters to mainstream customers.

And it remains a critical playbook for entrepreneurs worldwide. As an author, consultant, and speaker, more has profoundly influenced the strategies of industry giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Adobe. But Geoffrey 's impact extends far beyond the business world. His exploration of the deeper questions in life and ethics.

In his recent book, the Infinite Staircase showcases his ability to apply strategic framework to the broader human experience. Moore is not just a thought leader. He's a catalyst for change, pushing the boundaries of what is possible both in business and in life. His legacy is one of innovation insight and an unrelenting drive to help others ascend their own infinite staircases, both in the marketplace and in the world at large.

Geoffrey , it's an honor to have you on the show today.

Geoffrey Moore: Whoa. I don't even recognize that person you just described, but Okay. Okay. I'll, I'll, I'll play the role.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. No, it truly, it truly is an honor to have such a marketing legend on with us today. So I really appreciate you taking the time. Like I said before, I just finished reading Crossing the Chasm, and it's funny because the book is actually only two years older than I am, or, or sorry, two years younger than I am.

That's the right word. Like I'm 35 and you wrote that book 33 years ago. I did. It's it's incredible and it was super fun to read it. Like we talked about this briefly before the show. I could connect with so many of the companies that you chatted with so many innovations. It kind of felt like I was the right age for so many of those companies.

As we go through the book and obviously the internet, I remember AOL I remember getting the free CDs in, in, in a serial box. I think like it was crazy back then. And you know, it was a pleasure. It was just as entertaining of a read 30 years later, as I'm sure it was when you first wrote it.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, thanks.

I mean, what I, what I actually had to do was was rewrite it twice, but I didn't actually change the, the, the ideas or the frameworks. Really at all. I just put in new sets of examples.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Geoffrey Moore: So in 1991, there were a bunch of examples. In 1999, new examples. And then in 2014, the most recent set of examples.

But but the principles, as you said, it's interesting. So the lifecycle model, the technology adoption lifecycle actually goes back to a guy named Rogers who did the original research back in the fifties and early sixties, and basically that model. It's been like, that's like you're standing on the shoulders of giants when you're using that model because that model, as you point out, is incredibly resilient.

The piece that I added to it was a chasm to separated the early adopters from the mainstream market. That was my addition. That was great, and that that chasm also has held up as a property of the technology adoption lifecycle. And the reason why it still works 35 years later is the dynamics of that, of that, how people respond to disruptive innovation is a very deeply enrooted thing in the human experience.

And so it's still there. And if, if you're dealing, particularly if you're a B2B player dealing with businesses adopting technology, it's still, it's still the play. It still is the playbook.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it really is. And it's, I, I don't wanna say it's very complex, but it's very complex. Like you are so in depth with this book, far more than I think many marketers even take to heart.

And you know, I mean, I almost hate to admit that being somebody who's been in B2B for so long, I, you know, there were, there were ideas in that book that hadn't really crossed my mind at all. Did you find that when you were writing the book?

Geoffrey Moore: Well, it was interesting. So, so when you write a book, when I write a book, what I try to do is strap myself to a problem that I think is really hard to solve.

And I do not know the answer to it when I start. So it's, in other words, it keeps me engaged and it's, it's something worthwhile. And the case of crossing the chasm. My heart was going out to the product manager in a technology enabled firm who, you know, was, was supposed to get, it was supposed to create a product that would take, catch the World on fire.

And, and they were having this problem with the chasm. So they get the early adopters and, but they couldn't get across the chasm, they couldn't get the mainstream customers. And so the first thing was to look at that and say, well, what's going on? And part of it is a marketing communications problem. So there, so there is a di there's a way of changing your story from look at all the wonderful things you can do, which is what an early adopter wants to do.

Yeah. To look at all the terrible things you can avoid, which is what a mainstream customer, customers more interested in. Yes. But in addition to changing the narrative, you have to, you have to build an ecosystem around the product. You have to change your distribution, you change your pricing, you change your competitive strategy.

So it's, we ended up having this checklist of factors that you had to go through, and I think maybe some of those factors were not normally included in marketing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: But in terms of market development, they had to be.

Kelly Kennedy: I, I really, you know, and we can get into this later on, but I really love the idea of needing to create your own competition in order to actually find success.

I found that like, kind of eyeopening. I never thought about it that way, but you could never get, you know, the long-term customers without them having something to compare it against and say, your product is the best.

Geoffrey Moore: Exactly. Yeah. Pragmatist, people are not interested in categories of one.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It was it was a little bit mind blowing, and I can't wait to chat with you about all this, but before we do, like, how did you end up such a marketing legend?

Like who is Geoffrey Moore? How did you end up on this path?

Geoffrey Moore: Well, Geoffrey Moore did not start on a marketing. Geoffrey was a English professor. Geoffrey was in love with literature from his mother, was in love with literature, and he, he, he, I, I was a eng American Lit major at Stanford. I got a PhD in Medieval and Renaissance literature from the University of Washington.

I went to teach in a small liberal arts college in Michigan called Vete College. I, we were married, Marie and I were married at the time, and we had our third child in Michigan. So we had a small family. She Marie's from Palo Alto. We met when I was going to Stanford and the the, the, the social climate just wasn't gonna work, right?

So we, so at one point we just said, look, we, we have to go back to California. That's really where we, where we fit, we belong. Even though the college experience was frankly wonderful. So we did, and well, I went back and there was no jobs in academics, so I wasn't gonna be able to get a job as an English professor.

So I joined a software company as initially as a training director. And I told the guy that was hiring me, I said, look, I don't know anything about software. I think I know something about training. He said, well, you'll learn. And I thought, nah, I don't think so. No, no, you'll learn. You'll learn. Okay. So anyway, he believed in me, which was very nice and he mentored that me and it was great.

And so I was at that software company, company and learned a, a bunch about software and, and a bunch about, I realized at some point in a, in a tech company, you either sell it or you make it there. Really, I mean, being a staff person at a is not as much fun. So I knew I wasn't gonna make software, so I thought, well maybe I'll sell software.

And I was kind of a gift of, I'm a Irish heritage. I mean like, like, I like people, I like talking. Okay, we'll do that. And by the way, I was a very good presenter, so, so that was great. So we went into sales. Turned out I was better at opening than closing. Interesting feature, that's not quite what you're looking for in a salesperson, but eventually what it led me to was to marketing, which was like, well, what's hard about this And the, the transformative moment in my journey was I joined a company called Regis McKenna, which was the premier marketing consulting company to high tech co enterprises in the eighties, just by far.

And when I got there, it was like, I'd just come home. I mean, it was like. I, I love everything about this. I think I'm good at everything about this. This is great. So I was five years there and it was a wonderful place to be because that was Mecca for high tech marketing. Yeah. So everybody and his mother came through those doors and I had a role where I was, I kind of sat in on most of the strategy sessions 'cause I was sort of a framework guy, conceptual guy.

And so I was just able to see, I mean, people said, how do you do the research for that book? I didn't do the research for that book. I just sat in the room. I was, you, I was in the room like Hamilton in the room where it happens. So, so, and, and the book came out of an attempt to sort of say, well, how would we write a playbook to do this?

And that was the book, crossing the Chasm and, and being an English professor, writing was really fun for me. So I, I liked the writing, so that was great. And, and it, it came out, and I think, like I asked the, the, oh, by the way somebody introduced me to a literary agent. So for those of you who wanna write a book, you, you do want a literary agent who, you know, kind of takes you through the steps.

And we did. And you know, we thought, well, could we ask for a $10,000 advance? I don't know. It's all, no, you wanted to ask for a $50,000 advance. Yeah. And we got this one company, Harper Collins, who said, well, no, but we'll give you a 10,000 advance. And so I asked them, I said, well, so for a $10,000 advance, how many copies would you have to sell to break even?

They said, about 3000. And they said, well, okay, what would like knock the cover off the ball? 6,000? I said, okay, so could we raise the royalty for anything over 6,000 books? Sure. Okay. So, so basically it's now sold between one and 1.5 million.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Geoffrey Moore: So it, it, it just, it just wor But it, but it went built. It was interesting.

So the first six months. Sold 3000 copies, by the way, I was doing breakfast with the people from people well, KPMG, because they were affiliated with Regis McKenna, and they liked to have these breakfast sessions where they can bring their clients together. And then, you know, there was a few more speeches.

And then, and then somewhere along the line, I was introducing myself to somebody, to a meeting. I said, they said, oh, I'm Geoff Moore, blah, blah. Oh, he said, you're the chasm guy. And I thought, oh, the chasm guy. Maybe there's a, maybe there's a brand. So that's why I decided to leave Regis McKenna. Yeah. And to try this on my own.

And yeah. And it just, it just, it, it just kept going. It, it was very, it just, it just, and then it, I would say Hewlett Packard was, was my anchor client for the first 10 years. And they, they just wanted to teach everybody the vocabulary. Right. And that was the deal, the venture. And then the venture community said, we wanna teach our people the vocabulary too, because it just made for better conversations about investment decisions, how you, how you're playing, you know, where are you and the metrics, expectations, that kind of stuff.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Like, first off, amazing 1.5 million copies. That's unbelievable. It's like, honestly, after reading it, it's not unbelievable. But it's, it's very impressive. So congratulations on that. That's incredible. And two, you know, you know high tech, like obviously in the eighties high tech was completely diff Well, the same and different.

It was advanced for the time. Yeah. But compared to today, man, we're living in the future, you know.

Geoffrey Moore: We're the Jetsons now. Yeah. Well the, the, so the thing that makes it the re how does the framework then stay relevant? It's around this idea of how do pragmatic executives make high risk, low data buying decisions?

So the thing about the next wave of technology is it has huge potential, but it also has material risk. Yes. And if you wait until there's enough data, you will be late to the wave. Or you may even miss the wave. So you have to make this thing about how do you do? And, and so what do they do? So what they actually do, this is what the, this is the whole key to the, the chasm and the to and what we ended up calling the tornado, which is the, the uplift, the incredible uplift of demand, which follows the chasm, which is a dearth of demand.

And it's the pragmatic people going, talking to each other. I mean, they listen to the, they listen to the industry and they listen to the experts. They go to the Gartner group, they do all that kind of stuff. But the end, they go, okay, what are you doing? And they say, well, I'm, you know, I, I'm not doing anything yet.

How about you? No. Okay. Me neither. Mm-hmm. So that, that creates the chasm. By the way, that's the junior high dance moment where nobody's going out on the floor.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: The opposite thing happens later where they're going, you are, you are, you are. Oh my gosh. Me too. I don't wanna be left behind. So it creates this really peculiar rhythm and a, an adoption lifecycle where it's, it stalls.

It stalls, it stalls, and then it blows. It blows up. Yeah. And so that was what, that was the, that was the core of the framework.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the questions that I had regarding the book was, what is typically the timeline between say, the chasm and, and the pragmatics hopping on board? Is it a long time?

Geoffrey Moore: You know, it, it, it, it, it has to do with, well, first of all, there's two things.

You can influence the timeline because early on, and this was the whole point, buying, crossing the chasm, there will be a subset of the target market who is motivated to adopt earlier, not because they're believe what you believe or believe in the new thing, but because they're in trouble. They're in charge of a business process that just is under pressure.

It's breaking, it's not working. They've applied every conventional solution they can. It's not helping. And so they look across the chasm to all this new tech over there, and they're going, if there's anybody over there that can help me, I'm, I'm open for a, a meeting. Yeah. And so then what you have to do as a vendor to accelerate that is you have to not only bring your cool new thing, you have to bring the whole sol we call it the whole product.

Actually, Ted Levitt was a guy called the whole product, but we stole the words. Stealing is good, by the way. So, so we, the whole product, which is the, the complete solution set for that problem in that industry, for that process. So it's very local, but if you take that problem off the table, then everybody in that, in that.

Smaller community tells everybody else in that community, Hey, there's an answer to this problem. It's like the vaccine from Moderna or Pfizer, you should take the vaccine. Right? Yeah. So, so you do, and that creates the beginning of an ecosystem and the beginning of of this pragmatist herd effect of, oh, they're doing it so I can do it.

So that, that, so o in the absence of doing a crossing the chasm effort, the chasm can last forever. I mean, in other words, you, you have to, you have to intervene.

Kelly Kennedy: Are there any examples of companies making it without crossing the chasm?

Geoffrey Moore: Yeah, you can actually start. Well, it's interesting. There are things, if, if the, if the world's just ready for it.

Facebook.

Yeah. Facebook

didn't cross the chasm. Facebook went from like zero to 100 in 7 seconds. Yeah. Because, because so much work had been done in advance. And indeed this, there's a guy named Martin, i'm forgetting his last name at the moment. He's, he's at Andreessen Horowitz. He's a wonderful, wonderful investor.

But he's making the point to me the other day of saying, look, Geoff, now that we have so many layers of technology deployed across the world, the chasm problems getting less and less. My view of that is the, the for for certainly for consumers, that's really true. You consumer things really need to start inside the tornado.

They need to be able to take, they're like a fad. They need to be able, Taylor Swift, they need to be able.

Kelly Kennedy: We're so aware too, we're so aware of, of the development of technology.

Geoffrey Moore: Yes, yes. Yeah. But businesses who have to change their operating model, no matter how sophisticated they're with technology, anytime you mess with your operating model, you're, you're taking a, an investor risk.

You're taking a real risk. Yes. So the risk, and that's the whole point of the life cycle where there is risk, there's a life cycle.

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting. So kind of what you're saying is that on the consumer market, maybe it has been alleviated, but really when you get into big corporate, when you're selling to corporations, it's, it's as evident as ever because they're not willing to take that risk until you've proven beyond, beyond all doubt that it is going to be the effective solution.

Geoffrey Moore: Or, or, or they're under duress to fix something that they can't fix by any other means. Yes, that's absolutely correct. And so the consumer thing, the thing about the consumer thing is it, it's a risk. It is TikTok a risk. Well, yeah, but you know what, then just de-install it. So it's not the, the, the amount of risk is so low.

That's why you can play the game.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. You know, Geoff, we have a lot of listeners right now who maybe have not read the book. I'm gonna be promoting it huge. 'cause I do think everybody should read this book. But for those of them who are hearing this idea of the chasm, but we haven't really explained it, do you mind just giving a brief overview of what the Chasm is?

Geoffrey Moore: Sure. So what the, the, what Rogers did in the technology adoption lifecycles, he said, look, there are different personas that adopt the technology at different points in its history. And he had, he identified five personas, and I'll use our term, he had his own terms for them, but I'll use our terms. So the first persona is the technology enthusiast.

Think about Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory. Yeah. This is somebody who just loves technology, wants to play with it. You will, you will travel to a trade show in order to see your product. I mean, they're just real. It's, it's their love. Okay. Yeah, that's great. They're important because if they say, this is not really any good.

Nobody else will play after that. Yeah. So you really, it is important you have good technology. The other early adopter constituency we call the visionary, that's an executive who goes, you know, if I voluntarily adopt this, now I realize it's not ready for prime time, but if I put extra skin in the game, I can leapfrog my competition and I can, I can get a competitive advantage that will crush them.

So this is like Geoff Bezos with using the internet for book selling. Yes. I mean, at the time Borders and Barnes and Noble were, were dominant. There was how in the world could this kid in Seattle change the world and he just completely crushed them.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: So that was the visionary thing. So that's fine.

The chasm is the next persona we call the pragmatist. And that's has that, that that dynamic I was telling you about. I will, I will do it when I see you do it, but not before. So that created a chasm because they weren't doing it. And then if you could cross the chasm and get these pragmatists in pain, we called them the pragmatist in pain.

Yeah. On the other side of the chasm. They're doing it under duress. They're not doing it voluntarily, but they, but they do it and they succeed with it. And then we, we, as you kind of go niche by niche, you get more and more say a little bit like pri winning the New Hampshire primary and then maybe the, the Florida primary or the Iowa caucuses or whatever.

At some point the thing goes, whoa, this is a real movement. Yeah. And then you start getting New York and California and the, and, and, and Texas and the, and the bigger states. So, so that, and then we called that the tornado, that that's when it just takes off.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: And that the tornadoes last less than a decade, you know, more than a year and less than 10.

So usually five to seven years, sort of at some point they, they ease off in Europe on what we call Main Street and Main Street can last for decades. Main Street is just a continual evolution of the category after that. So the Crossing the Chasm thing was. It's so hard for an entrepreneur and all you entrepreneurs out there, please listen.

'cause when you're selling to the early market, those visionaries and technology enthusiasts, the Bezos and the Sheldons of the world, whatever they believe what you believe, and you tell them you are an evangelist and you tell 'em the story and they, they light up. And you guys have this wonderful, wonderful exchange and everybody's excited this, and you all are rowing the same direction.

When you cross the chasm, you're talking to people that don't believe what you believe. And your first thought is, why am I talking to them? And the answer is because you've run out of people that you to know. So then the question, what do they wanna talk about? What they wanna talk about is this problem they have that nobody's solving.

So you have to completely invert your priorities. It's not about you anymore. It's about the problem. And the sales process is about the problem and the marketing communication is about the problem. And then eventually you get to talk about your solution. But not until we've completely had exhausted the, the, the dimensions of the problem.

So it's a, it's, it's, it's, it's just different the, the kind of salespeople you have, the kind of systems engineers, you, the kind of, the demos you give. It's all different. Yeah. And if you don't change, if you clinging to your old methods, you can't cross the chasm. And so that's what makes it hard.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the really interesting things that you talked about is that you can have almost like a false sense of success right before crossing the chasm is like, you could have this like blow up where you're having great sales and everything's looking amazing, and it's on the up and up, and then it's like, whole crap, we're actually in trouble.

That blew my mind a little bit. Can we chat about that?

Geoffrey Moore: And it's true. I mean, because the early market, by the way, some of those deals in the early market are eye-popping. I mean, people will put a ton of money in, but it's, it's the visionary. Yeah. And the visionaries figured, look, I'm betting my career on this thing.

I don't wanna, I don't wanna skimp, so I'm gonna put a ton of money behind this thing because I, I, I gotta raise, I gotta be successful. So that means, but. Whoa, do I have, I'm Taylor Swift, I just don't look like her. And it's like, well, maybe not. So, so that's the challenge.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, that, that really blew my mind because I could see as like somebody who's in marketing as someone who's in business development, if you're having that early success, it really would give you a false sense of, I got this.

Like, we got this all figured out. Let's just keep doing the same thing. Let's keep hammering what we're hammering, we're gonna get more people on board. And what you are saying is no, and, and talk to me about that, about that frame of mind switch. Because I can tell you from someone who's been in business development, marketing a long time, switching your frame of mind when you're having success is a hard thing to do.

Geoffrey Moore: Yeah. Well, so yeah. Well, a couple. So first of all, before you cross the chasm, what, what is the minimum? What's the, what do you have to accomplish before you cross the chasm? And what we would say is you need at least one marquee reference. And what that means to us is it's a company that everybody's heard of.

By the way, they've never heard of you, so, but they've heard of this, this company and, and that this company has gone all in on whatever your disruption is. So, and they, and, and what you did in order to make it work, because there was no partners, there was no standards, there was no, you, you put a ton of your, probably your engineering team is and anybody else in your company, and you just put 'em on the project.

You treat it like a project and you just, you said whatever. We're gonna do whatever it takes to make this customer successful. Yeah. When you do that, and then people like to write about that. So the Fortune magazine people and the whatever business development podcast, you might have that CIO on the podcast to tell, what did you do with this?

Exactly. That's great. But now we gotta get systematic market development. And when you go out and you try to tell the story, people just don't listen. Their eyes kind of glazed. They Yeah. Your messages just don't land. And so that's when you have to, so I don't think people change their frame of reference because they're just thinking, well, I'm bored on a Tuesday.

And they certainly don't change it the day after they sold the big deal.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: They're just too happy. But there comes a time when they look at their fund and here's what really happens. They look at their pipeline and they realize my pipeline is not, I mean, and the truth is they, they're a little bit like a python that swallowed an elephant.

That first thing was an amazing meal, but it's like you're not gonna have like a pipeline of elephants. Yeah. And so then it's like, I have a pipeline of rabbits, but, but that's a different hunting process and that's a different deal.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And like, you know, one of the things that I've realized in my time in business development and marketing is that you can lose a, you can lose a company at any time for any reason, right?

They can leave it anytime for any reason. And so many people get comfortable with what they have and they stop, they stop doing business development marketing and think, ah, we're good. Like, we have so much food coming in, we don't gotta keep hunting. But the reality is, like, you can lose your customers at any time for any reason.

So you always have to be on the hunt. And, you know, reading the book and, and thinking about the prag, the p pragmatic situation and, and working with the pragmatist, it's really hard because, like you said, they're, they, at that point, it's word of mouth. It's really spreading, you know, the credibility for your product.

But how do you get those first pragmatists on board? Because they're gonna be so reluctant to make that jump, to try something big. Do you really just have to go all in and try to give them everything they want just to get them on board in the first place?

Geoffrey Moore: No. What, what you for that first we call the beachhead segment.

The answer is yes at the beach end segment, you are 100% responsible for the whole product, including bringing in partners who do what you don't do. Yeah, 'cause they'll, that's fine, but you have to bring them. You can't just assume that they're gonna show up. Now, once you start getting that segment going, the second, third, fourth, fifth customer, same use case, same industry, therefore same word of mouth community.

Once you get three or four or five companies in the same word of mouth community doing the same thing, two things happen. First of all, everybody else in that community is now feels free to buy that solution. Second. The partners that are necessary to support the solution are now seeing it as a future source of business, not just a one-off.

So they're starting to invest in a thing. So now you're creating actually a mar, a sustainable marketplace where everybody's has a shared interest to keep the fire burning here. That's when you go, we call it the bowling alley. You then go to the adjacent pin. Well, if I have references in a whole product here, where can I take it next?

Where I can leverage the success in the first market by going, either it's an adjacent segment or it's an adjacent use case, or it's someplace my partners are taking me where they've been before. So whatever it is. And so you knock over a second pin and a third pin. And what now it starts to happen at some point is the horizontal players go.

Well wait a minute. This isn't just for this vertical. Yeah. Or this, this, this is for everybody. And that now a bigger ecosystem starts to form. So you don't, at that point you just have to supply your ingredient. You, you no longer have to do any more marketing ex for creating demand. Now what you have to do is competitive marketing.

'cause everybody and his mother's now saying, well I want some of that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: And now, so it's a very different form of marketing and the Boeing Alleys solution marketing, very customer focused. In the tornado, it's product marketing and it's very competitor focused. So again, that's a second change of that.

Now we change, you see, had to change your framework.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: Again, yeah. And this is, for example, way back in the day when word processing first came out, it was on mini computers. Wang was probably the most famous of them. NBI, there a bunch of them. But the point was when they went to the pc. You had to go from, from solutions to products.

They didn't. And so the PC word processing just went horizontal and took the market away from them. Going forward.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the examples you gave in the book was Palm Palm Pilot, and it's like, I'm, I am like on. I'm on the very tail end of Palm Pilot. I remember p people having palm pilots, but at that point everyone was switching over to Blackberries.

Geoffrey Moore: That obviously, what's funny about that is is, you know, you were reading the 99 version, right? Because there's a 91 version, the 99 version of 2000. So the 2014 version, and needless to say, the Palm Pilot did not make the cut. Yeah. But, but, but in 1999 it did. Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It was, it was kind of funny listening to that.

I, I wasn't sure I picked it up on Audible, so I got whatever I thought I got the most recent version, but I might not have. But it was funny listening to the Palm Pilot version of it. 'cause I remember that, and I remember, like, obviously it went from being huge to being dead overnight when Blackberry came along, and then obviously Blackberry became, was huge.

Geoffrey Moore: Dead, dead until the iPhone came along. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I know. I mean, it's, it, it's brutal. And, and, and look at Nokia. Nokia just got caught out in the middle of that.

Kelly Kennedy: That was one of the questions that I kind of had given, like, obviously you've been in technology for frankly, an incredibly long time, especially for what is now, because technology is changing so quickly.

Like you just see something new, blow something outta the water every five years, it seems like, and you know, we just talked about like the life cycle. It doesn't feel like, like the life cycle is much longer than five years of any technological advancement because it's just, it's changing so quickly.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, what happens is a lot of times the advancement will get subside, will subside into the low underlying platform.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Moore: So, so a lot of the technology that made, you know, a Blackberry successful is in the iPhone. It's just under the covers. And, and so the, the, the new thing comes along. It also depends consumer life cycles, I think, well, it, it, no, there's no question They're shorter.

I mean, the, the, I, when I, my, I, my first high tech software job was in 1978. So that at that time IBM was the dominant player. Yes. And there were, there were, there were the other, they called them the bunch, burrows, uni. Uni, univac, NCR, control Data and Honeywell. And, and that was computing. There were no many computers.

There was no PCs. Was that, was it? So if you think those lifecycles were at least a decade. Yes. And the mini computer lifecycle was at least a decade. And the data relational database lifecycles, but like the relational database is a good example. That was invented in the, in the eighties. It became universal in the nineties and it's still there.

So you, Oracle databases underlie still underlie most systems of record. Wow. Most systems of engagement. So that, that's what I mean by it kind of sinks down.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So yeah, it's just, it seems crazy. Like even, I'll be honest, like I'm 35, I should be fully immersed in tech and I try to, I try to keep up with it, but I feel like I'm hitting that age now where it's like, I don't know if I can keep up with this.

Like my kids will be playing the latest video game and I'm like, I used to love video games. And I was like, I just don't have time.

Geoffrey Moore: And by the way, your neurons are now committed elsewhere. Neurons, you're, you need to save your neurons.

Kelly Kennedy: It's it's honestly, it's hard to keep up and, you know, I'm trying to keep up with this new AI wave because I do recognize, you talked about it in the book and you had said in the book at the time that the internet was coming out that if companies did not embrace the internet, and this was like, you know, back in 91 you were writing this, you were like, if companies do not No.

Geoffrey Moore: I think you had the 99 version.

Kelly Kennedy: It might been 99. Okay.

Geoffrey Moore: The 99 version.

Kelly Kennedy: You were saying that if companies do not embrace the internet, it'll kill them and you were dead on. And I kind of feel, and I like get, call me out if I'm wrong, but I kind of feel like AI is that right now, if companies do not embrace AI and figure out how the heck they're gonna utilize it, it'll kill 'em.

Geoffrey Moore: I, I, I, I think actually, and people pundits more experience than myself of making the point that AI may be the biggest effort. I think it's important to say, well, what do we mean by ai? Because for example, we've been doing predictive AI for 20 or 30 years. That did not, that was, that has not been as revolutionary.

Wow. So the, the definition of ai, I think that does catch what is dramatically different is the, i it's five words advanced statistical software that learns. Yes. And so we've, 'cause we've had advanced statistical software for 40 years, years years. I mean, back to SaaS and SPSS, but, but advanced statistical software that learns and that continues to learn, you know, organically so that it just gets smarter and smarter and smarter.

We've never had that before.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Geoffrey Moore: Embedding that, embedding that capability in every software system in the earth. Is, is, is, is, is feasible And not only is it fe it's not even, it's not even that hard to imagine. And it's to, if you now have to choose between a, a system that learns and a system that doesn't learn.

Yeah. I just, you, you know, that's, that's the, that's the issue.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I'll give you like an example that I see it changing the world and I think it really is in time efficiency and taking things away from humans that humans have to do into things that a robot can do. Because ultimately, for instance, let's just talk about a podcast 'cause that's what we're on right now.

A podcast at some point will have to incorporate as much AI as humanly possible to remove the human contribution to it in order to keep it effective. And if humans keep doing that task, it will make them ineffective and uncompetitive in frankly, their show release schedule or their ability to stay relevant or their ability to interact with their, with their customers, their listeners.

Right? It's going to kill podcasters who do not keep up with it. And I see this in anything, business development people, anything along those lines where there's a human interaction or someone who has to interact physically with a computer to get something done. If we can automate that, it's going to have to be automated just simply to stay competitive in the future world.

That's, I guess that's the way I see it.

Geoffrey Moore: I, right. Well, I think there's, I think there's two stages here. So, so you're doing what I would call human in the loop and, and in the human, in the loop model, what we're trying to do is accentuate the unique contribution of the human by essentially subtracting out anything that a, not only the AI could do, but actually can do better.

Sure. I mean, the, the, the, it's very clear there's a whole bunch of stuff that AI does better eventually. Yes. And, and so and so as you subtract that, people get scared for their jobs, and we have this whole, and by. Protectionism. Isn't it crazy in the short term protectionism makes sense in the long term.

It it's failure. Yeah. But in the short term, it, it's, it's a buffer. And, and I think you people should not be you should not patronize protectionism because it, it's, it's an important thing to think about, but it's not a strategy, it's a tactic. Okay. So, but then there's another form of of, of ai you're moving forward called systems of autonomy where you say, you know what?

This is, there's no human in the loop. We're gonna have self-driving cars. Yeah. Then, by the way, that's a long way away, I think. I think so. But the point is, at some point I think you say, well, no, we'll have self-driving cars. So, so there, so, but systems of autonomy are the ones where people are going, this is where they talk about AI risks.

This is where they talk about all the, all those things. So I think, I think if to have a productive conversation about ai, we should say, look, let's set systems of autonomy aside and understand that those are still. Potentially risk, highly risk bearing and need full attention and not confuse them with systems of intelligence, particularly with human in the loop.

Where, where basically, you know, it just makes sense other than the fact that it may put people outta work, which is, which is a concern. But I think, and I think when you do that, what profession. Would not use this thing. And the thing that's shocking, I think to, to people in the white collar is that every other form of automation to date hit blue collar workers.

Yes. Much more than white collar workers.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right.

Geoffrey Moore: Gen ai. Excuse me. That was you and me.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it is. And there, and you know, I really, I am, I am a technology embracer. You would probably call me a little bit of a, of a vision.

Geoffrey Moore: You're an early adopter. You're, you're, yeah. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're at the front end.

You believe what they believe.

Kelly Kennedy: I really do. I really love technology. I feel like I'm just a product of the two thousands. I'm a millennial, right? Like, I love technology. I grew up in the world and I, I've seen it. What's funny is I'm a really unique generation because I've seen what happened before and I've seen what happened after I really fit in that middle ground.

Great. But I'll tell you what, like. Like you said, it's very hard to keep up. It's very hard to keep up. I like, even as a millennial, even as somebody who has embraced technology my entire life, I am finding it hard to keep up with the advancement of technology. And one of the areas that I think I find it almost the hardest to keep up with right now is in ai, because, like you said, I, I feel like I'm having to become a bit of a pragmatist because I'm getting hit with a new AI technology every single week.

Someone's reaching out to me, Kelly, I got this great new thing you need to look at. It's gonna help you with your bd, it's gonna help you with your podcast. Like you gotta look. It's the next big thing. But everybody has the next big thing. And I, I guess let's talk to, let's talk to people who own AI companies right now, and they are trying, let's say, to cross the chasm.

Yeah. Because they all are, but there's thousands of them.

Geoffrey Moore: Right? What, what? Well, a couple things. First of all, a couple of things. F first of all, for, for people like you and me as a customer and then for the vendor, the thing I, in both cases, when you have too much technology coming at you too fast. Stop thinking about yourself and think about your customer and work and, and say, where am I serving my customer?

But more importantly, where am I not serving my customer? Where am I potentially letting my customer down? Now we now let's work backward from that interaction. What could I invest in AI or anything else that would allow me to serve my customer better? And I'm gonna use that to prioritize what I investigate and what I invest in, and how I go forward.

That takes a lot of noise off, off the table.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: Now, if I'm in a vendor and I'm trying to cross the chasm, rather than just go to Kelly and say, Hey, yeah guys, this is really cool. I wanna say no. I, I'm gonna, I asked that question, what are the Kelly's of this world? Where am I letting the Kelly, where are the Kelly's of this world struggling with their business development?

What's, what's going on there? What could I do to take something off of Kelly's table and then I will qualify the conversation by saying, Kelly, I. I'm not gonna tell you about my new AI thing. I what? So are you having problem with this issue that you, you, you start a campaign and then it kind of goes sideways and you lose track of it, or you start whatever it's, yeah.

And, but it's gotta be a real problem. And, and you will either say yes or no. If you say no, I say, great. I was in the wrong room. If you say yes, well then I'll probe deeper. Well, why are you having this problem? And we prob and the deeper we probe, what I'm lead doing is I'm leading you to, well.

Interestingly enough.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Moore: We have an AI thing that does exactly what you need, and we'd love to at least show it to you. Yes. So you, you, but that's how you play the game.

Kelly Kennedy: You're building the curiosity and figuring out if there's a need ahead of saying, oh, hey, maybe I have something for you.

Geoffrey Moore: Yeah. As, but, and to be fair, in the early market, you don't do that.

And the early market, you say, this is amazing. Yeah. You wanna see it and people say, yeah, yeah. But not, but not on the other side of the chasm.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It's it's really curious because I, you know, I mean, obviously I was a bit too young for the.com boom. Right? Like, I don't, I remember being there, like, I remember playing with the internet, but I was 12.

Right. It was a different experience. Right. But, you know, do you, was it like this in the.com boom where there just felt it to be like a bajillion things coming at you at any given moment?

Geoffrey Moore: It, I, I, no, I think this is where I think Martine Cado is, has got the point. Every layer adds another, another. Set of exposures. So, and, and so, you know, therefore you can have more things happen more fast and, and you get more deployment. The other thing that's happened, which is interesting is the digital economy doesn't require as much capital investment as the industrial economy. 'cause you don't have to build as many factories.

You don't have to build inventory, you don't have to build distribution. I mean, there's a, there's a whole lot of stuff. If it's digital, you don't, you don't do any of that stuff, which means digital companies have returned much more. Capital than the industrial companies ever could, which means there's a ton of money sitting around and, and with financial managers wanting to put it to work.

Yeah. That's what financial managers like to do. Well, there's no, I mean, at some points, like we don't need that much money. And so then they start putting it to work in screwier and screwier ways, and then crazier and crazier investments. So you get this plethora of stuff, most of which in a, in a scarcer economy would not have been invested in, in the first place.

And so there's a lot of noise right now, and I think I, I think that digital noise is gonna, and then we have state economies who are doing a version of this as well. So I think there's gonna be a lot of digital noise for a long time to come.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Obviously Geoff, it's been 10 years since the last revision.

Yep. Yep. What has anything changed? Would, would you write another revision?

Geoffrey Moore: Well, you know, I, I think you have to wait for the, the, so the last, the, the, the books, the examples in the last version were companies like Salesforce and, and Box and Yeah. And so they were mostly SaaS companies and Workday and those guys.

And then I, I tend to be an enterprise software guy, so that's sort of the, the center of my, I'm not a consumer guy. So, so therefore there's a whole, the whole consumer thing. So for example, lean Startup was a much better book for consumer than, than crossing the chasm and, and vice versa. For, for, for B2B crossing the chasm is much better than lean startup, minimum viable product is kind, was kind of the key idea.

And, and consumer that's kind of like, duh, get that out there as fast as you can. That's right. And, but if you, but if you're in nuclear energy, a minimum viable product may not be the best idea. So, so so you know that that's, that's happened, but, but then I think the smart, so what, one of the things I've changed since then, well, we, cloud computing did enable it.

So cloud computing was part of the 2014 thing and mobile apps were part of the, for 2014. But since then, the combination of mobile and, and cloud has created ubiquitous. 2 billion, maybe two and a half billion people on the planet are digitally connected. Yeah. 24 7. So it's like that, that is a different reality.

And, and, and it's, in fact, we're concerned about the social and psychological impact of being overly digitally connected for children and adolescents and frankly adults. So that, that platform of life, going from the physical world to the digital world as your center of gravity, that that's a, that's a big change.

Yeah. And, and, and, and so I think that's, that's what we're, that's why you're getting all this sense of. Activity of noise.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh boy. Yeah, it, the whole metaverse idea freaks me out a little bit.

Geoffrey Moore: Yeah. Well, by the way, I have a blog entry today about, about, hey, I dunno if you just saw, but meta pulled back on.

Its latest vi v virtual reality headset and Apple's things kind of at three 30, $500. It's not flying off the shelves. What a surprise. So, so, so the point is the life cycle's still alive, alive and well in terms of you know, chasms and stuff. There's virtual reality has not crossed the chasm.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. Although, you know, like you said, like it's just a matter of time, like all these things, although, like, what does that look like for a human? Like, I guess I struggle with that and I, like, I watch my boys, I love my boys, they love video games. They, but that world too is a completely different world.

And it's funny 'cause navigating as a kid who grew up in video games, right? Like I had a Nintendo from age four, right? But watching my kids. Video games now scares the bejesus outta me because now they're actually interacting with other kids, with other people. They're creating entire online communities.

They make friends there. They look forward to seeing those people there. It is a completely different world than even the world I grew up in, and I know as a, as a parent, I'm really struggling with how to navigate this modern metaverse world.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, I think, I think at some point that this is why the last book was about philosophy.

Because, because basically as you change your worldview, you have to sort of say, well, how do my ethics. It's like, the book I wrote was like, look, all of our ethics were were, were created during religious era.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: I mean, they were all, they all essentially derived, derived from some religion. Okay. We're in a secular era now where the scientific explanation of everything makes it pretty clear that you don't need to have a religion nor explain the universe.

But if there's no God where the ethics come from.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: And how does that work? And you can't just have no ethics. So, so that's what I was trying to do, is saying, okay, in a secular world, how would you ground ethics? How, how does, how does that work? Well, now you're saying the same thing again, you know, in a digital world.

Okay. So what are the ethics in a digital world? And, and, and what is okay and what is not. Okay. Is it okay to betray your team on a digital universe?

You and I do not have this problem, but your kids do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I know. It's like, it's like I can't even remotely foresee. I'm like, I think that was one of the most surprising things and you know, since we're chatting about technology, right. The most surprising thing in my lifetime was watching the evolution of a cell phone.

Right? Like, obviously I remember the big brick Nokia that my mom carried around in 1991. And I, and I, and I've, you know, I mean, I got my first cell phone, I was in grade. 10 or 11 when I got my first cell phone. And at that time, that was a pretty big responsibility. We could text, but it was like 30 cents a text, so you rarely did, you waited till five o'clock to take a phone call because that's when they were free, right?

It was a different situation. And then I watched that obviously evolve into the iPhone and at the time thinking, wow, that's cool, but like, ah, do I really need internet on my phone? Do I really need all these extra things? Probably not because I'm only texting and calling. But then obviously that evolving into a super computer that only gets double as advanced every couple of years.

I could have never seen that coming. And I guess for me, what I'm questioning right now as a business owner, as somebody in business development, as someone who's watching the AI revolution is. What is the next cell phone? What's the thing that I can't see coming right now that in eight years is gonna completely blow me away?

And I worry about that for my kids because I worry about okay, you know, with the advent of social media, which is amazing on one hand and absolutely horrible on another, what is, what is the risk to them? What is the thing that I can't see coming that is gonna be dangerous for them? But I won't see it coming and I won't know how to handle it?

Geoffrey Moore: Well, I, I mean, I, I think social media is dangerous enough that you should, don't have to worry about if there's a saber-tooth tiger at your door. You don't have to worry about whatever's on the other side of a hill. And, and, and I, our, our society has not, we don't know how to cope social media. We, we thought social media was actually gonna be a democratizing liberating de, you know, de demo.

It's clearly a, it's clearly a much more powerful tool for authoritarians. It's a much more powerful tool for malicious actors. Than for, for life supporting actors. So it, it, by the way, it is a tool for life supporting actors. I mean, it is, it, the tool itself is neutral.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Geoffrey Moore: But, but I don't think anybody imagined how much power it could put in the hands of people that have destructive motives.

So, so, and we don't, and we don't know how to cope with that yet. And we, we, we, you, the guy that today's news was the Russian guy that got you know, arrested in France. 'cause he had, he wasn't moderating content on his on his social media platform. I mean, it's like, so how, but by the way, if you moderate the content, then you have other people that blow up attitude.

Yes. So we're, we're really, really struggling. And this is, this is a. The, we haven't def, I mean, this, this is a definitive one of the, and then you look at the, at the elections right now, and you look at how just the, the, the, the noise and frankly the, the, the tone of voice in our, in America right now in political discussion is just horrific.

Yeah. So, so I mean, those things are concerning. And so I think what you, but, but, but back to being a parent, this is why you still need Oh, oh, first rule, no digital at the dinner table. Yeah. We're gonna talk to each other even if we don't know what to say. And, and we, and we're gonna connect because we need to ground ourselves in something that's, you know, outside of the, of that noise.

So that there's a signal inside our hearts that can help us navigate a noisy world.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It's it's definitely a 21st century problem.

Geoffrey Moore: And it's funny, by the way, my, my parents worried about, were worried about TV then they worried about rock music.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Psychedelics. Yeah.

Marijuana. I mean, I mean, oh yeah. There, there's always, there's always some Saber tooth tiger somewhere.

Kelly Kennedy: Now I can't even get my kids to listen to Kiss or Motley Crue. They, they wanna listen to something else. Exactly. No, it's it's definitely really interesting and I, I think about it a lot, you know, like, especially it's something that I never thought that I would struggle with.

Like, as someone who grew up in technology, who embraced technology, who loves technology, I never thought that that would be the thing where I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, I think we might be getting too much technology.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, you know, this parroting thing, this parental gene Kelly, it does work on the whole personality.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: It's like you realize, you mean life's not about me. It's about somebody other than me. 'cause when you're a kid, life is about you. Yeah. I mean, yeah. You know, and it's like, well, no, maybe it's not about me.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Oh, okay. No, it's it's definitely, it's definitely nuts, you know? And I, and something I wanted to chat with you about too, like, as somebody who is a prolific author, you've written eight books.

We talked about this before, technically 11. If you consider all the revisions you've made to these books over time, like first off, amazing. And I know, you know, you started off in literature, but there's a lot of people listening. I talk to people all the time who are like, I, you know, I need to write a book.

Or I'm afraid to write a book, or I don't even know where to get started. As someone who has been incredibly successful, who's written amazing game changing books, you know, what kind of advice would you give to somebody who might be on the fence or is looking to write a book here in 2025?

Geoffrey Moore: I think, I think if you're not, first of all, if some people are compelled to write, like I will probably pass from this planet with a pen in my hand.

I mean, just 'cause I, okay, so set, set aside the people that are just compulsive. So then the question is, well, why would you write a book? And the answer is because I, I I, I need to get a platform for a change in the world that I can, a business development process or if you're a social entrepreneur, a social development kind of process.

So, so to do that, and if you're not compelled to write, first of all, there are there, it's not a bad idea to pair up with somebody who is a writer and to co-write it. You know, it'll say by Kelly Kennedy with So and So Below and the so and so below. Somebody that wrote, actually wrote the entire book, but, but basically it's your book and they're putting it themselves.

That's number one. But even before that at least in my experience was I got introduced to a literary agent before I'd, I'd written a, a manuscript. But you, but literary agents will. Can talk to you before that and what they, what you realize is say that you wanna write a book proposal, and it turns out what a book proposal is.

It's a, it's a, something you give to a publisher, the agent gives to a publisher that essentially describes why would, what, is there a market for this book? Who is the market for this book? Why would they buy it, and how would the author help sell it? And who, what other, so they, they're actually thinking about as, as a business, right?

Yeah. And, and which is not what you're thinking when you're wanting say, I need to write a book. That's not what you're thinking about.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: But, but if you're gonna have a, a, a, a publisher, now you can also self-publish on Amazon, and if you're good at social media promotion, that actually works really well, but you have to be good at then, then you're gonna promote the book, not the publisher.

By the way, publishers are not that good at promoting. So that's increasingly a, an avenue to consider. But the problem there is who's gonna pay your co-writer? I mean, there's, there's, there's money in the deal. Having said all of that, then I think the next thing is. You need to write about a i I I use the word problem.

I'm not sure. You always have to use the word problem, but it's gotta be something that's, that's important and urgent and not solved. If all you're gonna do is write stuff that people already know, frankly just go and chat GPT and get it in seven seconds. But if they don't already know it, then that's what requires you to, to lean in and, and do.

And so I think that, that, that's, that's a piece of it as well. Oh, and one last thing. So in my case, I, I'm also a speaker and, and, and I would say even before people paid me to be a speaker, I used to give Crossing the Chasm talks for free. 'cause I just, it was kind of, you know, you go to a trade show, they give, get a speaking opportunity.

Yep. Or lunch and learn at a, at a, at a company cafeteria. I think trying out your book as a speech is great because A, you find out what lands and what doesn't land, and B, you actually are creating the outline from your book. In your speech and, and you, you, and when you got the speech that finally works.

That's probably the outline for your book.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. That's, I've never heard that advice before, so that's great. You know? Yeah. I think there's a lot of people who are just like on the fence. Like I think a lot of people think that they can write a book and get rich, and I think I've talked to enough authors right now to know that that is not the common practice of what happens.

Geoffrey Moore: No, no. You know, to be fair, I don't think about of the book as, I mean, the, the publisher has to think about that, but you should think about the book. Well, for example, so yes, it's across the casm sold one and a half million copies. Great. The royalty great. So me, you know, but, but compare that to the amount of business it generated.

I mean, it, it created, it created three different firms. It created 30 years of consulting business. Yeah. Speeches. I mean, it created tens of millions of dollars of business. I. Easily. Yes. Forget about it. So you would give the book away on street corners if you had to in a way, you know, so it's, yeah.

Don't think about, I would not think about the book as a source of, and no, if you write a novel, very different. If you get, by the way, if you can get your novel into a movie score, way to go. That's a different, that's a different economics.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. No, that, that makes a lot of sense. And I think, you know, you hit it on the head, it's like, don't, don't write a book to get rich from the book.

Like if you're a, if you're a market leader in something, you'll find other ways, but use it essentially as a resource. For people.

Geoffrey Moore: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the right way. Yeah. And, and it's great. And, and, and it does help. And then, then people read the book and they say, okay what happened to me was, so how did this thing business get started?

Well, you know, I went on my own. It was company called Lost in Software. They read the book. They said, why don't you come out and give us a talk? Came out and give 'em a talk. They totally bought into the entire thing. So they looked at me and said, we're not gonna do this without you sticking around, so we want you on our board of directors.

Wow. And so they may, I've joined the board of directors. I mean, the point is, if, if the people, if they buy in your thing, then they wanna, they want you to stick around. And that creates, you know, either a consulting opportunity or, you know, speaking opportunity or, and typically it's typically you write a book, you get speakers.

People are always looking for speakers, say, okay, so you give a, you give a talk, somebody in the talk comes up to you and says, that's pretty interesting. Why don't you give a talk to my company? You go, that company, we say, well, we got this problem, but we need your help. So why don't you come and do a consulting with us?

Then when you do consulting, what you discover is. I didn't really understand the problem as well as I thought. Did I? Yeah. Hmm. Because we had these other problems and so you, you have to invent solutions during the consulting project to help the customer. And you say, well, okay, I'm just gonna add that one little extra slide to my presentation.

I'll be fine. Then you do another one. Well, I gotta add two more slides pretty soon. You get enough slides. I gotta write another book. I gotta write another book.

Kelly Kennedy: No, it's so funny too. 'cause even when I'm working with business development clients, right? Every single one of them has something additional or something more for you to consider.

One size never really fits all, but it can give you a nice outline. But you're right, there's always another slide. There's always something else to consider.

Geoffrey Moore: So when the center of gravity gets too heavy on the other side, you go, okay, I got another, I need another platform.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. You know, Geoff, one of the other things I wanted to chat with you about is you have probably a top 1% following, if not higher on LinkedIn.

And in this, like, I don't think many people were even considering that they needed to start building their LinkedIn presence until maybe Covid. I, I like to say even after Covid, because I think LinkedIn really exploded in Covid, right? Like there was pre Covid LinkedIn, which we knew how to use, but not really.

And then after LinkedIn it was like, you best figure out how to use this damn thing. 'cause it is here to stay. You know, you're sitting close to 700,000 followers. What is it like to, to grow to that level? And then what kind of responsibility do you have when you have a following like that? Which is I think something people don't consider.

Geoffrey Moore: Yeah. For, well for me, first of all, LinkedIn represents my target audience. It's a B I'm a B2B marketing person. This, this is a B2B, this is not Facebook, this is not TikTok. This is business to business. So that's number one. I think number two is, and actually something's happened to LinkedIn in the last, it's post covid where people are starting using it more like business Facebook.

Yeah. I think that's a misuse of, of LinkedIn where they, I just think that's not what I would put on LinkedIn. And it's, and, and, and it's gonna make too much. If I were the LinkedIn people, I'd worry about it 'cause it's creating more noise, less signal. The signal on LinkedIn is what are business people thinking about, talking about and, and investing in, struggling with and whatever.

So back to the responsibility. I think, you know, everybody has a brand promise. So you have to think about, well, okay, what's my brand promise? In my case, my brand promise is, I'm gonna try to look at you, the situation through a business person's eyes, with respect to technology adoption and, and all the forces in the industry.

And particularly if you're in a high tech company, I, that's, that's ground zero for me. And I'm gonna try to think about what, what are you struggling with? And then I'm gonna try to take the frameworks that we've developed over the last 35 years. And there's probably a, I dunno, a library of 20 or 30 frameworks.

There's a lot of frameworks after, you know, that kind of time, what framework would help straighten out this problem best and then write a blog post against it? And my blog post always ends. That's what I think. What do you think?

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Moore: And, and so I, because I definitely wanna pull in people to that dialogue.

And the more people they get pulled in, the, the, the better.

Kelly Kennedy: So it's really about creating a, a conversation. That's really what you want to do. At the end of the day, you don't wanna just put a statement out to the world, right? You wanna interact with people, right?

Geoffrey Moore: But, but you wanna, but yeah, you need to provoke the conversation, not just evoke it.

So you can't just say, well, what do you guys think? Or like, what's keeping you up at night? You know, that creates a kind, creates too diffuse a response. Yeah. So you need to say, I'm going to make a provocative statement, but I'm provoking you in order to encourage you to disagree. Not necessarily to agree, but, but, but I, but I wanna, I wanna get to the efficient frontier of where the problem is.

'cause put people tend to do, and what frankly makes much of what's on LinkedIn and frankly much of what's in any medium tiring, is they, they restate the general consensus. It's like, okay. We kind of knew. And if I didn't know the consensus chat, GPT will tell it to me in seven seconds. And by the way, it really will.

Yeah. You'll, you'll really get the consensus.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: So, so that's not what we need right now. People, we need people at the efficient frontier of where the consensus breaks down. What do we think's happening there?

Kelly Kennedy: How did you learn how to use it? Like I, and, and I know this sounds really funny coming from a millennial, but it does feel like the people who know how to use LinkedIn know how to use LinkedIn.

And I've talked to some people who said they hired coaches. I've talked to other people who said, I've just been around and seen it happen. In your particular case, Geoff, how were you able to learn how to utilize LinkedIn as effectively as you have?

Geoffrey Moore: Well, the guy's name is Rich Tibro. So, so basically, I mean, my belief is you play to your strengths and partner to your weaknesses.

I am digitally weak, Rich is a social media consultant and Rich he's on retainer. And so basically what he does, what I've asked him to do now, this is something we've developed over time, but, but the current thing is every week on the weekend, he will send me a list of between three and seven topics each with a, it's, they're always in response to an article somewhere.

Might have been in Harvard Business Review, might have been on LinkedIn. Most normally they're not mostly other media. And he'll say, you know, here are seven things people are talking about. You know, I think, you know, maybe one of those would spark your imagination so that we're, we're doing that, you know on, on a basis.

And then, and then I will, and I, I'm compelled to write, so I usually write something every weekend.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: And, and, and then we post it on Monday. So so that's what I'm doing. And again, I think, I think. You, if you're genuinely at the efficient frontier of any interesting question, your audience will self-organize around it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: If you're trying to promote yourself, that's what, that's what I find annoying about LinkedIn. There's too much self-promotion. And, and it's, it's like, oh, God bless you. You know? And there's also too much attaboys. I, by the way, some Atta boys are fine, you know? Okay, great. But it's like, come on let's get to stuff that matters.

And that's a lot of people. That's not what they're doing. They're, they're just either, they're either advocating for themselves or, or they're doing something that's. You say, well, okay, God bless, but not very interesting.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I think the, you're right, and I think those posts get very little engagement being the other side of it, right?

Like when I'm teaching people how to use LinkedIn, I do try to say to stay personal. Do something that actually is meaningful to you. Speak in your own words, right? Yes. And I, you know, I mean, I think that that is what people should be doing. I just think there's a lot of people out there who just haven't figured it out yet.

Geoffrey Moore: And they will. Well, you know, to be fair, to be fair, blogging looks consumer blogging is, tends to be personal and it tends to be very much like li reading somebody else's diary, right? I mean, like a, I mean, really they, they can be be highly personal. It can be amusing, it can be, it can be tragic, it can be whatever.

It's So that, that is TikTok and Facebook and Instagram. Yeah. It's not LinkedIn.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: It's not what LinkedIn is for, at least not in my view what LinkedIn is for.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Moore: So LinkedIn is, is, should be a resource, not a not a pulpit. And so if you can put something on LinkedIn that is a resource. Then I think it's, it's valuable and it should get a following, but if all you're doing is expressing yourself, I would not use LinkedIn as a forum for self-expression.

Kelly Kennedy: You know what's crazy though, Geoff? I've watched people do it for that and get ridiculous engagement.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, Okay. Okay. Then by the way, notice, do you notice that I've, you notice mine? You're like, but I, my hair's very gray, so, so my demographic, so lemme ask, I'm advocating for the A A RP part of your audience, because for me, that, that, that's over overstepping the thing.

But to your point, the younger you go, the more you can, Hey, you know, we can do anything we want.

Kelly Kennedy: I, I do agree with you though. I actually agree with you completely. I think LinkedIn should stay beneficial, but yeah, it is one of those things where it's like, if you look at what's, what's getting engagement, it really is.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, the, the problem now is, is LinkedIn's gonna lose its market.

Mean, if you think about how LinkedIn makes money, if you think about how LinkedIn adds value. This is not adding value. Yeah, I mean it, it's actually, it's just noise. It's not subtract well, it's subtracting value in the way that noise subtracts value from being able to detect signal. So if I were the LinkedIn folks, I would try to think of some way to, I don't know how I would do it.

We're back to now how do you moderate social media? Yeah. And and the truth is we don't know yet. But by the way, int inte advanced statistical software that learns should help moderate something like this problem.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, I was gonna say.

Geoffrey Moore: Be a human in the loop. You know, it should help.

Kelly Kennedy: In Canada, man, they're filtering ours.

I'm not thrilled about it. They, they filter the news we get here through social media in Canada, which is tyrannical.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, the, the problem then is because it didn't get Canadian, so it is Canadian social filtering, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Geoffrey Moore: We know, we just, we, we know how we filter. We just take out all the extremes and we leave the middle.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. We just, we just leave, we leave the opinion. We want them to see.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, no, no, no, no, no. We leave. No, no. I'm gonna say this. An American talking about Canada. We, we, we, we, we, we try to land on the opinion of least astonishment.

Kelly Kennedy: There you go. Yeah. I don't know. I, you know, I mean I'm still of the belief that news should be free, but whatever.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, no, but nobody, but no seriously, no. Stay with that because it has to be free. I mean, at some point, first of all, it's gonna get out one way or the other anyway, so that you can't stop covid by not You have to vaccinate. Yeah. You can't just say isolate. Remember we did try isolate China, tried isolating.

Yeah. Not very successfully. Vaccinate, don't isolate. So the same thing. You let let it out there, but then this is back to your dinner table. I want you to have your kids around the dinner table for their vaccination for now you can go out and play on the internet because we vaccinated.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. No, this has been amazing, Geoff. And you know, one of the things that has come to my mind throughout all this is I know I. Like, I know that you obviously have books out there and we're gonna promote them for you, but are there other services that you also provide? Are you still consulting? Do you still, I know you're still on board of directors for a few different boards.

Are you accepting more offers on that front? What, what is it that you I know you doing public speaking. Do you still take on any of these engagements?

Geoffrey Moore: So it's interesting there, there's still two consulting firms that I, so I'm chairing emeritus of these firms. So the Chasm Group and TCG Advisors Chasm Group, more oriented towards startups and crossing the chasm, TCG advisors more oriented toward established companies.

And the latest book called Zone to Win, which is basically how does a big enterprise cross the chasm? 'cause the big, it turns out it's the same problem as a, as a startup, but a startup, it does not have a problem of focus. I mean, it only has one place to go, but a big company has a lot of. Problems. How do I, how do I manage a disruptive innovation while I'm still trying to run the core business?

And it turns out that, that, that's where I'm spending most of my time right now with large enterprises that are struggling with that problem around this, the, this zone management framework that, that was in the last book. But other than that, I what I, I have a very few relationships when I'm an advisor and I give speeches, but typically, you know, in, in forms, by the way, the speak, I don't know who invented the speaking business, but God bless them.

They pay you way too much money. You always fly first class, you give limos, you, I mean, it's like blue m and ms, I mean, whatever. I mean, so it's like, I mean, I, I'm kind of hooked on that. Yeah. But, but those, that's probably mostly what, what I'm doing these days.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. And if people do wanna book you for speaking engagement how do they go about doing that?

Geoffrey Moore: Well, they did go to the LinkedIn thing and just send me a message on LinkedIn. And I got, I, I live in a bubble, by the way. There's some wonderful people that surround me that take care of all the stuff that I'm bad at. So all I have to do is like, be on podcasts or write books or give speeches. I don't have to do any of the work.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I hope that I am that fortunate.

Geoffrey Moore: I hope it's a good life.

Kelly Kennedy: That is something to aspire to you. I am on board for that. Geoff, this has been absolutely amazing. Well, my pleasure. I want you to know that. We are standing on, you know, on the backs of giants, and you are one of those giants. And I just wanted to say thank you for your, for your contribution to the marketing industry, to business development.

We could not be where we are without you. And so thank you for all you've done.

Geoffrey Moore: Well, thank you for that acknowledgement. I really appreciate it. Thanks.

Kelly Kennedy: Until next time. This has been episode 238 of the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.