Futurism on the other Side of Chasm

Sam Ghandchi

http://www.ghandchi.com/471-FuturismChasm-plus.htm

In 1991, Geoffrey A. Moore wrote an interesting book called Crossing the Chasm .  The book was about marketing for new technology startup companies.  His main discussion was that there is a huge chasm between those he called visionaries who first adopt a new inovation and those he called pragmatists who adopt new products.  It meant that he saw the discontinuity in these transforming new innovations making it necessary to have a strategic view of the whole product and a need to position it for what he called crossing the chasm.

In other words, on the other side of the chasm those who have the potential for adopting the new innovations are not like the visionaries who are enthusiastic about new things and always chase them, rather they are pragmatists and turn to new innovations to fulfill specific needs when they see such solutions to respond to their particular needs and this is why the marketing professional should pay attention to the whole product concept and its positioning as to what specific needs it fulfills and not to try to show his or her customer that the new innovation is interesting or novel or to be the last word in contrast to all there is to attract the client because basically this is not the reason for adoption of a new solution by pragmatists in the other side of the chasm.

If we get into more details we will see that for visionaries long discussions about whether this new innovation is more important than another one or whether in the past or future what other alternatives have been or could be are interesting and such countless hours of such discussions are needed to get them excited about a new innovation to get attracted to it and to adopt it.  Whereas for the pragmatists it does not matter whether the innovation says the last word or whether something in the past or another alternative with other claims is of any importance or not.  For them, the issue is what place the product occupies in fulfilling the specific needs they have and what is important for them is how the solution will achieve its goal.

I do not mean to say that when new innovations have reached a stage of moving to the other side of the chasm, nobody will challenge it anymore as not being anything new or saying that it is not offering anything we did not have before and that nobody will respond to those challenges anymore.  In fact, new innovations of high tech when moved to the other side of the chasm, still there were many people who spent their time and life on these kinds of discussions but in practice they were the ones who failed in advancing the new innovations to success, because they did not recognize on time that it was no longer important to spend time on this side of the chasm and they ought to have spent their efforts on building strategies for the other side of the chasm and to implement those strategies to get results, and this way Geoffrey Moore's book became the secret of success for many who were empowered to recognize the right time to cross the chasm for their new innovations and no longer wasted their energy on the first side of the chasm.

In my opinion futurism especially in Iran is crossing the chasm and attention should be now focused on the pragmatists of the other side of chasm and not on the visionaries of the previous side.  I think most of the discussion topics of Iranian futurist web sites and publications are of no use for the success of futurism in Iran and are wasting their time and even those of the visionary group of the first side of the chasm are tired of the repetitious articles and more and more the sites are losing their visitors.  Discussing with people who still do not see any need for Internet or global economy or futurist party is a waste of time.  The issue is that these discussions among the visionaries and the early adopters of such transformations has been going on for a long time and it is now time to target the pragmatists and their concerns and for them it is not important to prove that in our time we should build global economy and not national economy and such discussions are waste of time.  The question for them is the shapes that global economy will take and what it will bring us, bad or good.

Let's put it in a very simple example.  If a TV program is made to show the Japan's auto industry that has been created with the strategy for global economy, and shows how they have been able to sell millions of their cars in the U.S., and how this has been able to impact the life of the people of that country, such a program can prove better than hundreds of articles trying to prove that automaking of the early part of last century based on US economy is obsolete now and auto-making with a global strategy like Japan's of the last half century is superior.  The issue for pragmatists of the other side of the chasm is to see the new model with its values, advantages and disadvantages and not to discuss to be convinced as to whether this is new innovation or not, or what its history has been,  and the endless repetitious discussions with the old thoughts or even with the competing ideas.  Those discussions have always existed and will continue to exist.  For futurism, in my opinion, the central issue is now the other side of the chasm and not the side it has focused its efforts for the half last century.

When I look at Iranian futurist publications and media I seldom see anything focused on the other side of chasm.  The best I have seen so far is a new TV program by Voice of America (VOA-Persian) called Shabahang:

I do not mean that the Shabahang program has the total richness of what futurism on the other side of chasm should have.  Not at all.  In fact, other publications and media that are still focused on the first side of the chasm are more complete but are of no use for the pragmatists who are on the other side of the chasm, although they are academically a lot richer.  In contrast, in practice the Shabahang program tries to express strategy and the whole product solution of the other side of chasm, but I am not saying it is doing it consciously, because I do not know, but from what I see, this program is offering a new model for Iran.  I do not mean talks like it is for the youth, which are just slogans.  It is not the issue of young and old.  The new model once offered is for anyone to use.  And I am not talking about the details of the programs where even 80% of it to be effective futurism, needs to change.

The quality level of the attempts for the other side of chasm is like the work in Singapore and Japan when four decades ago focused their attention on a strategy of global economy although at that time even 20% of their economy was not there in practive.

Let me summarize, in my opinion, it is time for futurist publications and media to seriously look at what they are offering and to target the other side of the chasm or it will not long before they will lose even this diminishing number of visitors they currently have.

Hoping for a Federal, Democratic, and Secular Futurist Republic in Iran,

Sam Ghandchi, Publisher/Editor
IRANSCOPE
http://www.iranscope.com
April 16, 2007

Related Book:

http://www.ghandchi.com/500-FuturistIranEng.htm

Text in Persian

http://www.ghandchi.com/471-FuturismChasm.htm