Crossing the Chasm

In Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, there are several ideas that could be useful to Communists. The Wikipedia article gives a summary of the ideas.

Primarily, I think the application of these ideas is relevant because Communism is a disruptive technology (way of doing things).

My assessment of the current state of Communism in Australia is that we are in the Innovators part of the Technology adoption lifecycle. And as such, we have been unable to bridge the First Crack (p.17):

... The first is between the innovators and early adopters. It is a gap that occurs when a hot technology product cannot be readily translated into a major new benefit - something like Esperanto. The enthusiasts love it for its architecture, but nobody else can even figure out how to start using it.

I say this because all of the Communists I have met have been keen enthusiasts about how good Communism would be for Australia. We have been quite successful in several types of ventures: political parties, newspapers, conferences, and mass rallies.

We seem to have captured the Innovators: The Technology Enthusiasts (p.30) segment. Classically, the first people to adopt any new technology are those who appreciate that technology for its own sake. ... (p.30)

On the other hand, the Early Adopters: The Visionaries ... are that rare breed of people who have the insight to match an emerging technology to a strategic opportunity, the temperament to translate that insight into a high-visibility, high-risk project, and the charisma to get the rest of their organization to buy into that project. ... (pp.33-34).

There are three (3) problems with the early market (pp.39-40):

1. The company simply has no expertise in bringing a product to market. Very true in Australia as there has been no revolution.
2. The company sells the visionary before it has the product. Is our product the party program or the general concept of Communism?
3. Marketing falls prey to the crack between the technology enthusiast and the visionary by failing to discover, or at least failing to articulate, the compelling application that provides the order-of-magnitude leap in benefits. I do not know.

I think the party should now involve itself in setting up a business consultancy to enable workers to take over failed businesses and keep them running so that they can have jobs. We will need to mobilise our accountants and lawyers to, at least, consider the venture. Given the approaching economic storm, we will have more than enough opportunities to demonstrate the superiority of worker-run firms.