Geoffrey Moore - Building Gorilla Businesses

Principles & Lessons:

• Secure a “gorilla” position by harnessing category power. Geoffrey defines a gorilla company as “a market share leader in a powerful category,” explaining that the “hierarchy of powers” first rewards your place in a hot category: “If you are in that category, that rising tide floats all boats.” But the real leverage comes when one business becomes the de facto standard or “gorilla,” with everyone else—“chimps and monkeys”—gradually disadvantaged. As Geoffrey says, “The ecosystem forms around the gorilla, which instantiates the gorilla permanently in that category.”
• Recognize and unlock “trapped value” to create or redefine categories. Geoffrey emphasizes that identifying a significant inefficiency—“where is the trapped value?”—provides the rationale for a new technology or business model. He cites examples like Uber exposing idle car capacity and Airbnb monetizing spare bedrooms. For B2B, trapped value often appears as wasted time or complexity: “It’s time plus complexity plus error,” he says, referencing developer tools like Twilio or Stripe. Without focusing on such urgency, you risk building technology with no compelling reason for adoption.
• Crossing the chasm depends on targeting “pragmatists in pain.” Geoffrey’s adoption life cycle highlights that you cannot jump from flashy early adopters to the big mainstream market without first solving a specific pain point for practical customers. He says, “They do not believe what you believe,” so you shift from talking about your tech’s greatness to addressing the customer’s pressing problem head-on. “We know your problems,” is the new marketing pitch, rather than, “Look at our amazing product.”
• Adapt your message through the four phases (early market, bowling alley, tornado, mainstream). In early markets, your emphasis is “breakthrough, amazingness” to attract visionaries. Once you cross the chasm, it must become “all about the customer’s problem.” In the tornado, you compete aggressively on features, discounts, and distribution for market share; and finally, in the mainstream, you focus on customer success and retention. As Geoffrey puts it, “Four very different messaging platforms,” each demanding a totally different style.
• Architecture strategy shapes competitive power. Contrasting open vs. closed, proprietary vs. non-proprietary frameworks, Geoffrey notes that the strongest positions often involve “proprietary open architectures,” in which others contribute but remain tied to your “de facto standard.” As he says about relational databases, “All the independent software vendors… had to choose” one approach, and when they chose Oracle, it “disenfranchised the Sybase one.” This demonstrates how critical architecture decisions can lock in an ecosystem.
• Enabling technology can yield broader success than single-use applications. While applications lead initially because “people won’t buy infrastructure until they see the application’s value,” the real scale comes when you become the common platform. He underscores this with examples such as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, or Salesforce: “If you’re in an enabling technology, you have to be humble and make sure the application side leads first.” Once adoption takes off, a platform’s ecosystem advantage can compound.
• Established enterprises must learn ‘Zone to Win’—sustaining innovation while pursuing disruptive moves. Geoffrey’s later work focuses on big public companies evolving beyond their initial franchises: “Zone to Win is really Crossing the Chasm for public enterprises.” He explains how incumbents can avoid stagnation by dedicating focused investment to new disruptive categories, even if it temporarily hurts earnings. According to him, “You haven’t established franchise… but if you don’t catch this wave, it’s going to catch you.”
• Culture and leadership galvanize transformation more than pure technology. Citing Salesforce’s V2MOM approach (vision, values, methods, obstacles, measures) and Cisco’s “weekly commits,” Geoffrey shows how disciplined operating principles help unify teams around priorities. He also contrasts a “customer-centric” style—“We have a mission in the world… we’re letting our customers down”—with a “competitor-centric” style—“We’re not going to let those guys beat us.” Either model can work, but only if it motivates teams out of their comfort zones: “It can’t be about you,” Geoffrey concludes.

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