Keeping innovation alive at Adobe

Adobe Systems chief executive Bruce Chizen found the right moment to leave.

The company continues to rack up double-digit earnings growth as it rides a very successful introduction this year of its media-authoring package, Creative Suite 3. Looking forward, the picture looks good as well, financially and strategically.

So Chizen decided to step aside, handing the reins to current president and chief operating officer Shantanu Narayen, who will become president and chief executive at the beginning of December.

During his seven years as chief executive (and 14 years with the company), Chizen has overseen dramatic changes at Adobe, most significantly its merger with Macromedia in 2005. Rather than cater just to designers with products such as Illustrator, Adobe now has a wide product portfolio of customers that includes creative professionals, as well as consumers and businesses.

After announcing his planned resignation from the "all-consuming" job of chief executive, Chizen spoke to ZDNet.co.uk sister site CNET News.com about Adobe's strategy, its prospects, and the internet industry at large.

Q: You said you chose to leave now to show that it had nothing to do with the company's financial health. On the other hand, Adobe definitely has heightened competition from Microsoft and potentially Google. What was behind the timing?
A: I've had competition from Microsoft for as long as I had the job, and Google is just one more player. So, you know, there's always competition.

This was all about me. And what I was looking for — knowing that I didn't want to do this forever — I was looking for an opportunity in which I could take a break, and when I felt that the company was in good shape.

This company has given a lot to me, has fulfilled a lot of my wildest dreams, or exceeded my wildest dreams, and I wanted to make sure I left the company in good shape.

I think about what we've accomplished, or are about to accomplish, this year with 22 percent growth, year over year, and I think about how the company is positioned going forward, I feel really good about my decision. And that's the extent of it.

One of the things you said during the conference call is that you changed to a platform company — one of the changes between seven years ago and now. And you're a much more diversified company as well. How has being a platform company put you in a stronger position?
When you have a platform that ecosystems depend on, it gives the company many vehicles to come up with solutions that take advantage of the platform. The reality is that Adobe has been a platform company from day one. It just never thought of itself as a platform company.

You think about PostScript and the company's ability to then come out with applications like Illustrator... and the other solutions that took advantage of PostScript. And think about what we did with the Acrobat and the Adobe Reader.

[We came] out with LiveCycle as an enterprise-class product around that platform. And what Macromedia did around Flash authoring and the Flash Media Server.

So [I tried to] encourage and force the company to think about the value of those platforms and what it means, in terms of developing new applications that we would have insight on.

One of the things that was clear at the Max [Adobe customer] conference was that Adobe wants to make money on services. But that's not really your heritage. So how do you take advantage of online software without disrupting your revenue stream and business model?
Business models change all the time. If you think about it, Adobe was once a company that sold PostScript to a handful of printer manufacturers, and then we had to figure out how to sell shrink-wrapped software through the channel to millions of end users. And then we needed to figure out how to sell enterprise-class solutions with LiveCycle to serious enterprise IT organisations.

This company has given a lot to me, has fulfilled a lot of my wildest dreams

So services is just yet another enhancement, or shift, that Adobe has to go through. I have confidence that Adobe, the company, will be able to do that. Fortunately for Adobe, we are a technology company first. And I believe that in the high-tech industry, if you get the technology right, everything else, you can figure out.

Even in the area of services, we already participate in services — from our revenues perspective, to a small degree, but we are participating. Create PDF Online has been a service that's been available on a subscription for a number of years.

If you think about what we've done with Premiere Express, providing a [video editing] service to partners such as Viacom, YouTubeand PhotoBucket — and what we're doing with Photoshop Express in the future — that will be a service offering.

So what you'll see us do is take our technology and look at different ways of delivering that and monetising that. The good thing for Adobe is that because a lot of today's revenue sources are from products that require the power of a desktop, we will be able to experiment, and we have time…