Big Shoes to Fill at Adobe

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Narayan's Mandate: Selling AIR

He's referring to Adobe's ambitious new product line, called "AIR," short for Adobe Integrated Runtime. The technology takes the best of what Adobe and Macromedia had done well separately, by essentially merging the Web browser with the desktop.

Google (GOOG) and Salesforce.com (CRM) are already moving desktop tools into the browser. AIR would go a step further.

In some ways, it's an even more ambitious strategy than one pursued by Chizen for so long. Chizen spent much of his time selling businesses on Acrobat, the platform-agnostic document-creation software. Narayen is talking about changing the way people access the Web—arguably a feat that's both broader and riskier. And just as the Acrobat product called for a salesman CEO, AIR calls for an engineer CEO. Adobe will need to woo and stay attuned to the needs of the software developers who will play a key role in the success or failure of AIR.

Doubts aside—including my own—Narayen does have a better pedigree than Chizen had when he took over. Chizen laughs when I ask if a salesman CEO is better for Adobe than a former engineer. He says people had many doubts when he followed Adobe co-founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke. "When I first got promoted there was an army of people saying, 'How the hell are you going to run Adobe? You are not a technologist and you are trying to fill the shoes of two people who were technologists,'" he says. "Those were all fair questions."

It just goes to show what makes a great CEO isn't the résumé, it's the person. And Chizen has been a class act. He's refusing to take a huge retirement package, saying CEOs are overpaid, and he's working 24 hours a week for the next year, so he can keep his health-care benefits and not get demoted to a part-time contractor's badge. In his final year, his combined salary and target bonus equal $809,375. Office scavengers are already loitering around his office seeing if there's a monitor or two they can poach.

So the only way we'll know if Narayen goes the way of Rollins is to watch him in action. I, for one, will be watching closely. So will most of the Web, whether they know it or not.

Sarah Lacy has been a business reporter for 10 years, most recently covering technology for BusinessWeek. Her book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, will be published by Gotham Books in May, 2008. She is also Silicon Valley host of Yahoo Finance's Tech Ticker.