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I admit it, I shamelessly stole the idea for this post from a comment left by Scott Heiferman (yes, the MeetUp guy) on Kara Swisher’s blog.

“Someone needs to write the Crossing the Chasm for this era.”

Crossing the Chasm remains a groundbreaking book and, like all books that introduce a truly innovative idea, its conclusions have become so ingrained in modern business culture as to seem entirely obvious.

The basic premise is this: technology-based innovation thrives in the beginning by feeding the appetite of early adopters for new things. This audience is quite tolerant of risk in the workplace and elsewhere, and pushing boundaries is more important than being safe. But products stall when they seek mainstream acceptance because there is a chasm between the enthusiasm of the early adopters and the pragmatism and risk aversion of the early majority — i.e., the people you actually need to sell to to build a really large business.

Where we are now is a little different, in part because the costs of creating technology-focused businesses have fallen substantially. It’s possible (perhaps not likely, but possible, which is more than enough) to build something that appeals to a tiny niche in the tech community, and sell to Google long before the hard questions have been asked about the intrinsic value of what it is you’re building.

So the new chasm doesn’t necessarily have to be crossed at all, in the sense that success can come without addressing anyone other than people like you. But in its own way that stifles innovation, because what gets built doesn’t solve real problems for real people. Which in turn further widens the rift between the things that get built and the things people want.