Crossing the AI Adoption Chasm: Turning Innovation into Impact

# Silicon Valley

# CSS Executive Forums

CSS Executive Forum – Silicon Valley

November 3, 2025

At the CSS Executive Forum – Silicon Valley, we had the privilege of hosting Geoffrey Moore, legendary business strategist and author of Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win.

Decades after introducing the world to his technology adoption framework, Geoffrey returned with a timely challenge for today’s leaders:

“The speed of innovation in AI is unprecedented. But the speed of adoption hasn’t caught up — and that’s where the real work begins.”

His message resonated deeply with our community of Customer Service, Support, and Success leaders. The AI revolution isn’t just a technology story — it’s an adoption story, one that will define which organizations truly turn innovation into impact.

Adoption Is the Work

While engineers and product teams continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible, Geoffrey reminded us that real value lies in helping customers absorb and apply those innovations.

“When customer success first emerged,” he said, “it was about telemetry and feature usage — helping customers get better at using well-understood products. But AI changes everything. The workflows aren’t defined yet.”

In other words, this is no longer about usage optimization; it’s about workflow creation. Customer success is becoming the bridge between technology and transformation — guiding customers through uncharted territory and shaping entirely new ways of working.

“This is an adoption problem,” Geoffrey emphasized. “And at each stage of adoption, the world needs something different from you.”

That insight reframes our mission. The challenge isn’t to ensure adoption — it’s to lead it.

Crossing the Chasm, Again — This Time with AI

Geoffrey revisited his iconic technology adoption lifecycle, reframing it for the AI era.

In the early market, visionaries and technologists are already all in. They have executive sponsorship, flexible budgets, and a willingness to experiment. Their goal is not efficiency — it’s proof. The mission here is to create lighthouse successes that demonstrate what’s possible.

“Until that happens,” he said, “nobody crosses the chasm. People will just keep talking about it forever.”

Once those early wins emerge, the next wave — the pragmatists — will only engage when they see clear evidence of business value. That’s why Geoffrey insists: use cases, not features, are the true unit of value.

The breakthrough happens when companies stop talking about AI in general and start solving one specific, high-impact problem deeply, consultatively, and side-by-side with the customer.

“The use case,” he explained, “is the bridge between the technologists and the businesspeople. It’s where real value creation happens.”

Each use case becomes a playbook — a repeatable model that builds momentum and confidence, turning innovation into adoption.

From Playbooks to Trapped Value: Finding What’s Worth Solving

Once adoption begins, the next challenge is knowing where to focus. Geoffrey called this the art of finding trapped value — the hidden potential locked inside outdated systems, broken workflows, or organizational friction.

“All systems create value,” he said, “but all systems also trap value. The game is to find where it’s trapped — and release it.”

This is where customer success teams shine. Through curiosity, empathy, and deep listening, they can uncover where customers struggle and what’s holding them back. Geoffrey suggested simple but powerful questions:

What’s stopping your company from being twice as successful as it is today?

Where are your people stuck in work that doesn’t move the business forward?

The answers reveal opportunities for transformation. Every friction point is a chance to apply AI, automation, or re-engineering to free up trapped value.

The most successful leaders, he said, treat these initiatives like venture investments — start small, focus on one use case that’s big enough to matter, small enough to deliver, and close enough to win.

Customer Success: The Bridge Between Innovation and Adoption

Geoffrey challenged the audience to rethink what Customer Success means in the age of AI.

“Customer success used to work from the product out,” he said. “Now it must work from the customer in.”

That shift redefines the entire mission. Success is no longer about driving usage or adoption metrics — it’s about helping customers reimagine how they work and achieve outcomes they couldn’t before.

He described a role that blends empathy, business acumen, and technical fluency — one that operates “in the room where it happens.” It’s not a sales job or a product job; it’s a transformation job.

And while Geoffrey never mentioned it by name, his description perfectly captured the mission of the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) — those hybrid experts who embed with customers, co-create solutions, and translate technology into impact. Like the FDE, Geoffrey’s “adoption vanguard” lives at the intersection of innovation and execution.

Leading the Change: From Innovation to Impact

Perhaps the most powerful insight of the night came when Geoffrey reframed adoption as a leadership challenge.

“If you make change about people themselves, they’ll resist. But if you make it about something outside of them — a customer need or a competitive challenge — they’ll rise to meet it.”

True transformation, he explained, requires a narrative that inspires. People need to see how their efforts connect to something bigger — serving customers better, defending market leadership, or shaping the next generation of experiences.

Drawing from Zone to Win, Geoffrey urged leaders to segment their organizations by stage of maturity:

Incubation Zone: small, entrepreneurial teams proving new use cases.

Transformation Zone: where new operating models take hold.

Performance Zone: driving efficiency and scale.

Productivity Zone: continuously improving how teams work.

Too often, he warned, companies fund all these motions the same way — forcing one team to be both explorers and maintainers. His advice was simple: fund by stage, measure by adoption, and lead with purpose.

My Takeaways

Hosting Geoffrey Moore was a privilege and a timely reminder that leadership is being redefined in real time. Here are my biggest takeaways for Chief Customer Officers and customer leaders:

Innovation without adoption is waste. AI only creates value when it changes outcomes for the customer.

Use cases are the new unit of value. Focus on specific, high-impact problems that prove business benefit.

Customer success must lead from the customer in. The real opportunity is to guide transformation, not manage usage.

Adoption happens through co-creation. Embed with customers. Learn together. Capture and scale what works.

Narrative drives change. Inspire your teams and customers with a story that connects technology to purpose.

Continuing the Conversation

The dialogue we began at the CSS Executive Forum will continue across the SuccessLab CSS Community. As AI reshapes our field, our collective mission remains the same: to connect innovation with adoption, and adoption with real customer value — one use case at a time.

I invite you to join our growing community at community.successlab.us — a space for Customer Success, Service, and Support leaders to exchange ideas, share best practices, and shape the future of our profession together.

You can also subscribe to our CCO Perspective Newsletter for insights, interviews, and event highlights from leading voices in the CSS community.

What do you think? How are you and your teams helping bridge the AI adoption gap? I’d love to hear your perspective.

By Omid Razavi, Founder of SuccessLab & Organizer, CSS Executive Forums

Comments (0)

Popular