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Small Canadian tech marketers with global ambitions shouldn't even try to go it alone BY KARL MOORE
In the 1990s, many companies based their strategy around the theories of Geoffrey Moore (sadly no relation). In his books Crossing the Chasm, inside the Tornado and The Gorilla Game (HarperCollins Canada), Moore tried to show tech entrepreneurs the way to win in a global economy in which the Internet and mobile phone applications were opening vast new markets.
Moore's theory was tailor-made for that decade. he described how a few companies would pioneer in new technologies. They had, however, to "cross the chasm," a period of time when potential demand for new high-tech was on the horizon, but wasn't yet real enough to reward the risks. Many were not able to cross the chasm. A few, such as Nokia, did. Finally, when a technology such as mobile phones and m-commcrcc caught on, the vast herd of customers and investors began to move. This is the phase Moore called "the tornado." Here demand for a new technology explodes and the player that crossed the gap first with the most...