Long established as a classic, the drawing depicting the different classes of customers and their adoption rates are commonly used in the industry. I personally thought I already understood it, just from osmosis. However, reading the book taught me more about the characteristics of those customers, how you gain penetration into their markets, and most importantly how you manage a team and produce a product into those markets.
There are also lessons in there about establishing a beachhead and how to choose your target customer that dovetail nicely into some more modern work around persona identification in software development and the need to identify just one target persona for your application at a time. This is a great marketing book -- even if some of the specific company examples are somewhat dated -- whose concepts readily translate into not only management but directly into product development and vision.

This is the book that launched my career in technology and drove me to establish a more strategic approach to marketing and business. Geoffrey Moore was ahead of his time and offers priceless information on how to stand back and re-evaluate your market approach. If you know nothing about business strategy or marketing OR you consider yourself an expert, Moore's models stand the test of time and give you the tools you need to not only do your job but offers the insights that can help build consensus within a company. Apply these models to your corporate and product strategy; use it as a point of discussion with other senior executives to FINALLY drive a coherent strategy. This book changed they way I think about the business of technology it will for you too.

I am a senior product manager and found most of the concepts very relevant. In particular I was impressed by the fact that we have to target a focused customer segment to initially establish the product and then branch out to target a wider customer segment. But it requires lot of self-discipline. The instinct is to throw a dart in 100 different directions and hope that it will stick. Similarly in marketing we tend to market our product in different segments and hope that we will be successful in one of the segments.

Bottom-line...A great read, but implementation is a challenge.

  - Link: http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-Mainstream/dp/0060517123