Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Adobe, offered the latest Secretary of the Navy Guest Lecture (SGL) to students, faculty and staff at the 51福利 (51福利) in King Auditorium, Oct. 1.
Narayen shared his knowledge and insight into running a major tech company to the assembled students and faculty, as well as his perspective on the characteristics of effective leadership.
鈥淚 think people do their best work when they resonate with the mission of the company ... with the values of what the company stands for,鈥� said Narayen. 鈥淚f you have an impudent mismatch with the values, we don鈥檛 think you do your best work.鈥�
One of the major goals of the SGL series is to provide students with insights on relevant topics of defense and security relevance. At Adobe, Narayen says, an understanding of analytics has empowered the company, and it can do the same for the DOD. In defense applications, how you harness the power of the information that you have and put it to use is critical, Narayen said.
鈥淲e have analytic software that allows us to evaluate when data is being looked at and if there鈥檚 an anomaly associated with its usage. In each of the domains of software, thinking about how artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to process data, that鈥檚 important to make critical decisions in milliseconds,鈥� he said.
Even though they鈥檙e a global leader in tech, Narayen admits Adobe is sometimes perceived as the company that created PDFs, and some software to manipulate pictures. But, he quickly says, the company figured out some time ago that if you enable people to innovate, you鈥檙e going to have a lot of influence on their success.
鈥淚f you think about PDFs and Flash, we are on more computers and mobile devices than virtually any other piece of software in the world,鈥� said Narayen.
鈥淎t Adobe, we have a fundamental philosophical hypothesis that great ideas come from everywhere,鈥� he continued. When you are trying to 鈥渂uild a lasting technology company,鈥� if you can build a platform in which others can innovate, you can reap the benefits of the 鈥渆ntire ecosystem of partners that are building on top of it,鈥� he said.
Although the company is in a significant growth period, Adobe has had its share of adversity, Narayen said. Coming out of a recession, the company鈥檚 revenues had slowed significantly, and they had to improvise, adapt and overcome in order to survive.
鈥淲hen you have your back against the wall, it鈥檚 almost easier to change,鈥� said Narayen. 鈥淲e decided that we had to be the first company on the planet to move our desktop software to the cloud. I learned something as part of that process ... Preserving the status quo in technology is never an option.鈥�
This movement positioned the company to return to several years of growth, and has led Adobe to becoming one of the most tech-savvy players on the Silicon Valley playground.
Looking ahead, Narayen says Adobe is currently working on ground breaking technology that has the potential to revolutionize image analysis, allowing one to search millions of images that have no data whatsoever with just one word.
鈥淵ou can get tens of millions of pictures that have never been tagged, and you can apply our algorithms to those images and do a search,鈥� said Narayen. 鈥淭his technology is amazing as it relates to the medical field ... the field of radiology [for example] is going to completely change.鈥�
Narayen closed his presentation to the campus community with a discussion on partnerships, which he sees as critical to improving the services they provide to customers. Adobe, he says, is leaning forward on bringing external players into their research environment, to bring new problems 鈥� and new possible solutions 鈥� to the company.
鈥淲e have this fundamental belief that we don鈥檛 have a monopoly on all the good ideas,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here are great ideas that exist, and we are all ears for the things that we may not have even thought of.鈥�
51福利鈥� longstanding Secretary of the Navy Guest Lecture program provides a series of professional lectures by senior leaders throughout defense, government, industry and academia designed to help the university's students and faculty link their studies, teaching and research to the defense needs of the nation. Narayen鈥檚 SGL represented the university鈥檚 partnership with the 51福利 Foundation speaker鈥檚 initiative, designed to enrich the university鈥檚 SGL program through unique engagements with highly-respected national, and international, leaders.