Profile paper on Adobe’s unique innovations

[einsr4572928]

I am a Graduate Student at the University of Maryland, and I am working on a company profile paper. I chose Adobe. I have been using Adobe products for more than a decade and a half, I admire Adobe as a company, and I chose to write a profile paper on Adobe’s unique innovations for my studies.

I would like to ask you few questions on how Adobe encourages innovation, nothing detailed, just general insights from experience. Below are the questions:

- What makes Adobe so unique in innovating new tools and products,

- is it the collaboration?  Is it employees and talents?  Is it culture?

- How does Adobe nurture collaboration?

- How does Adobe encourage and support innovations?

- What makes Adobe unique in maintaining an unparallel competitive edge?

- Where does Adobe get this genius creativity?

- How do ideas come to life at Adobe

- If there is a superpower at Adobe, looking at Adobe's innovation timeline, what is it?

Your contribution will be highly appreciated.

Regards,

--Roger

[Pamela 28]

Speaking strictly as an amateur user, Adobe has a unique combination of beginner usability and enough depth to be a comprehensive tool (or set of tools) for the professional. Photoshop, being one of the most publicly recognizable facets of Adobe products, they have entry level and affordable versions in Ps elements. But there is a continuity between Elements and CS versions that makes the learning curve a bit less daunting when taking things more seriously. This community is also a great asset in terms of learning more about how to use the wealth of tools and features - at every level.

Not sure if this answered any of your questions though.

[einsr4572928]

Thanks, Pamela.

Those are great insights and I will definitely be exploring the community conversations to learn more about Adobe tools.

On the other side, I was asking how Adobe come up with these innovating tools like photoshop?  is it great talents, great engineers? great designers? great culture at Adobe? how does it nurture creativity?

[Nancy OShea]

Long time product user:

Just for fun, note how many people are involved in the various products you use.  For example,  open Photoshop Extended.  Go to Help > About Photoshop and allow the list of credits to scroll all the way to the end, if you can wait that long.  Now do the same thing with the other products you use.

Nancy

[einsr4572928]

Thanks Nancy, this is really helpful. I will check the credit section. and a question that I have is how do Adobe manage these talented people and how does it encourage innovation in the teams, keep them and drive them to successful products like photoshop?

is it a culture at Adobe? is it the collaboration?

[Nancy OShea]

einsr4572928  wrote

a question that I have is how do Adobe manage these talented people and how does it encourage innovation in the teams, keep them and drive them to successful products like photoshop?

Interview some Adobe Team Managers for their point of view.  I can't comment because I don't work for Adobe. 

I will say this about product innovation though.  In a word, acquisitions.

Photoshop was the brain child of an independent software engineer, Thomas Knoll & his brother, a special effects pioneer at Industrial Light & Magic, John Knoll.  They sold their software's distribution license to Adobe in 1988.     Thomas Knoll - Wikipedia  Adobe Photoshop version history - Wikipedia

In the early 90's, Homesite, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Freehand, Director, Shockwave, Flash, Presenter and others were acquired and/or developed by Macromedia.  Macromedia's closest competitor was  Adobe Systems who subsequently acquired them in 2005.

Macromedia - Wikipedia

Business Catalyst was founded in 2004 by 2 Australian entrepreneurs, Bardia Housman and Adam Broadway.  BC was acquired by Adobe in 2009.

Business Catalyst - Wikipedia

The list goes on & on....

In addition,  Adobe products have historically thrived from innovations inspired by 3rd party developers whose optional Add-Ons & Extensions provided enhancements which the core software lacked.  Many of the Photoshop filters we use today were born out of  3rd party plugins that Adobe  saw fit to acquire & integrate into the core software.  It doesn't stop with Photoshop either.  It's fair to say that Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Acrobat, Premier Pro and many others are all reaping benefits from 3rd party influences.

Nancy

[cmgap]

Well said Nancy

[einsr4572928]

Thanks, Nancy. That is a great insight!

[Ussnorway]

you can add Muse and Fuse to the list of outside developments... Ime (as someone not working for them) Adobe is very much 'short term' in their company thinking but that pays the bills and allows them to stick around so its not really a bad thing, I just don't agree with your "Adobe encourages innovation" statment