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Behavioral science · framework

Crossing the chasm

Geoffrey Moore, 1991

Moore noticed that the smooth adoption curve hides a cliff. Between the early adopters who love a new thing for its novelty and the early majority who want a safe, proven choice sits a gap in motivation so wide that many innovations fall into it and die — not for lack of merit but for lack of a bridge. Crossing it, he argued, takes a beachhead: one segment won completely, not a thin spread across many.

Working definition

Moore's marketing model: the chasm is a credibility/reference gap; crossing it requires a beachhead segment, not broad appeal.

Where Vela uses this

Crossing the chasm is the most explicitly applied member of the adoption set, and Vela holds it as the practical edge of the network-adoption thesis rather than as behavioral science proper. It is included because the corpus already cites it and the adoption work points toward it. Pairs with diffusion of innovations (the curve it interrupts) and complex contagion (a deeper account of why the gap is real).

Origin & lineage

Moore (*Crossing the Chasm*, 1991), building on Rogers's curve → standard vocabulary in technology marketing and startup strategy.

Related concepts

Scholars

Honest framing

This is a practitioner model, not a tested theory, and it generalizes unevenly beyond the tech markets it was drawn from. Vela flags it as strategy literature included for completeness, weighted accordingly.