Inside the Tornado
by Geoffrey A. Moore · first published 1995
65% recommend35% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Covers how a company's strategy must change as it grows, from finding niche market fit to scaling in a tornado phase; recommended for founders and product leaders on startup and innovation strategy.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Inside the Tornado is the bestselling guide to the high-stakes world of high tech. Extending his investigation (in Crossing the Chasm) of the life cycle of new technology-based products, Geoffrey A. Moore provides useful guidelines for moving products beyond early adopters and into the lucrative mainstream market.
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…back in 2014. An excellent book for re-reads and a nice place to get some inspiration. !Other honorable mentions:! Actionable Gamification (Yu-Kai Chou) I invented the Modern Age (Richard Snow) Inside the tornado (Geoffrey Moore) Jony Ive (Leander Kahney) Sprint (Jake Knapp) The lean startup (Eric Ries) The selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins) Titan (Ron Chernow) The inevitable (Kevin Kelly) The Innovators…
on “Ask HN: Books you wish you had read earlier?” ↗None of this startup porn is new. The best source I've found discussing all stages of company development is Geoffrey Moore's work (Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado).
on “How to Become a Must-Have” ↗…physics/chemistry Amplify Positive Deviance model from Jerry Sternin (Save the Children) "The Empowered Manager" by Peter Block, in particular his trust vs. agreement matrix "Crossing the Chasm" & "Inside the Tornado" by Geoffrey Moore "Maneuver Warfare Handbook" by William Lind "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life" by Daniel Amen "Micromotives and Macrobehavior" by Thomas Schelling Appreciative Inquiry Techniques
on “Articles, Ideas, Books and/or Concepts that have changed your life” ↗Without knowing your business, or the environment you are in, it is difficult to really make a recommendation here. I would recommend picking-up the book Crossing the Chasm or Inside the Tornado, both by Geoffrey A. Moore, if you haven't already looked at them. You mention that you've gained pretty good traction both and you're getting close to mazimizing the 'in-between market'. I suspect you…
on “Ask HN: Pricing models, stand-alone software vs. enterprise what works?” ↗I would recommend these books for a good grounding in marketing and fostering innovation: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey Moore Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker Marketing High Technology by William Davidow Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank Jumpstart Your Business Brain by Doug…
on “Ask HN: Are there any good Internet marketing books?” ↗…in it. I think maybe you managed to find an early market but didn't shift your operational strategy & tactics to reflect your progress. I would suggest you read Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado. They are very, very good books. I read them over 10 years ago and haven't found them to be wrong yet.
on “The Dark Side of Customer Development and Lean Startups” ↗…for a niche first, then for other niches, then the niches collided with each other and they start building for mainstream and standardizing their product. Chasm Companion book(and Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado) explains this very well. http://www.princeton.edu/~guanchun/Books/The%20Chasm%20Compa...
on “What's the best launch strategy for a web startup?” ↗…misunderstood tool by trying to be everything to everyone. # Niche vs Horizontal If you are interested in the trade offs related to going niche vs going horizontal I think 'Crossing the Chasm' and 'Inside the Tornado' are great books to read. # Disclaimer I'm working on https://www.blossom.io which has a feature set similar to trello but is aimed at people who deeply care about product development.
on “How Trello is different” ↗…haven't read the others on the list so don't mean to be dissing them, just don't have any first-hand experience. I'd also add - Sherry Turkle's The Second Self - Geoffrey Miller's Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado (a different Geoffrey Miller than the one in the original list :) ) - Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan, The Entrepreneurial Mindset
on “Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read” ↗If you like this you should read "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado" - they go into greater depths of how to find a niche, how to pivot and how the general market forces work.
on “The Bowling Pin strategy” ↗I haven't read Dealing with Darwin, but I thought Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado were just as insightful and useful as Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma. They're also complementary to that, because Innovator's Dilemma is more about the strategy of building a product the right…
on “The Geoffrey Moore talk that Joel Spolsky said changed his business.” ↗…very useful for startups to shape their products into something with a high potential for success. Blue Ocean Strategy is also a similar and great book, and the Chasm books series (Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, Chasm Companion) are very good complementary books to Innovator's Dilemma (and Innovator's Solution).
on “Microsoft makes 5 times more income from Android than from Windows Phone” ↗…recognize good ideas for businesses that have a stronger potential to succeed. If you want to expand on the ideas in those books there are also Innovator's Solution, Blue Ocean Strategy, Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado.
I recommend a book called "inside the tornado", which deals with innovation at larger companies. https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Inside-the-Tornado... His previous book "Crossing the Chasm" was also good, but that dealt with startups…
on “Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy” ↗…product does not mean you have a better Whole Product. (See cassette tape vs DAT, Windows vs OS/2 and many more.) The Whole Product concept was popularized by Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, which were seminal books at places like Netscape. Before that, the key idea was TAM, the Technology Adoption Model, pioneered by Professor Everett Rogers in Diffusion of Innovations in 1962.
on “How often do superior alternatives fail to catch on?” ↗