Big Shoes to Fill at Adobe

Chizen will be a tough act to follow. Can Narayen, with an ambitious plan to remake how we gain access to the Web, fit the bill?

by Sarah Lacy

A little more than a year ago an exhausted Bruce Chizen was just landing in Barcelona. He'd been on a plane all night and, despite the rigorous travel schedule associated with being chief executive officer of Adobe Systems (ADBE), he'd never gotten very good at sleeping on planes. As the plane taxied to the gate, a groggy Chizen checked his Treo and was jolted by bad news. The son of Adobe India's CEO had been kidnapped. "This is hell," he thought to himself.

It was then that Chizen knew he would retire sooner rather than later. He already knew he didn't want to be CEO for the long haul and had told the board as much. But he was also torn. Adobe was on a roll. On his watch, the stock had risen 40% and revenue had more than doubled. Chizen's crowning achievement: the acquisition of Macromedia, maker of the Flash technology that enables online animation and video. Chizen still loved wandering among Adobe's engineers, discussing products and how they're being improved. And of course, he enjoyed the adulation of Wall Street and his customers.

Chizen's Step Down Surprised Many

But the drawbacks were legion. There were new corporate governance regulations and the daily headaches that come with running a $25 billion company. Then there were the many things he couldn't control, like the kidnapping. And the landing in Barcelona crystallized it, he says. "It wore on the whole week and it was emotionally painful," Chizen says. "Thankfully, his son was returned, but I said to myself, 'Do I want to spend the rest of my life doing stuff like this?' "

The answer became known Nov. 14, when Adobe said Chizen, 52, would step down as CEO. I, for one, was taken aback. I have covered Adobe for years, and the company's products go a long way to putting food on my table. Any publication I've ever written for has used Adobe software, be it Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, or InDesign. I recently authored a book on Web 2.0 companies; Flash technology is a big reason many of them are so captivating. And my husband is a graphic designer. The only company he may love more than Apple (AAPL) is Adobe. "They make my whole life possible," he says. Plus, the Brooklyn-born, excitable Chizen always seemed to have more passion about Adobe than anyone else—and not in that phony, media-trained-executive way.

The decision shocked Wall Street, too. Shares slumped as analysts and investors mulled the implications for one of software's better performers of late. Stepping into Chizen's shoes will be Adobe's longtime No. 2, Shantanu Narayen. But Chizen was for so long the public face and scratchy voice of Adobe that even analysts and reporters who covered Adobe for years hadn't met Narayen in person. No one knew what to make of the change.

A Very Different Style

The two men are very different. That became clear when I sat down with them recently in their first in-person joint interview since the succession was announced. Chizen is a hustling, charming salesman. Narayen is a shy, engineer type. The differences helped make them a great team for the 10 years they've worked together. But tech is littered with examples of strong No. 2's who never made strong No. 1's. Kevin Rollins of Dell (DELL) springs to mind.

Within Adobe, there was little surprise at Narayen's ascension. He had been the heir apparent for years. Every unit except legal, finance, and human resources was already reporting to him, and even before becoming chief executive he had run engineering and products—the core of any tech company. His only real rival for the job was Macromedia's former chief executive, Stephen Elop, who has since left the company (BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06).

Indeed, Narayen makes no bones about how much he has wanted this job—even after hearing all the things Chizen won't miss about it. "This is a dream come true for me," he says. "I'm going to miss our partnership, but we are one of three or four companies in the world who can make the Web experience better than it is today."