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Stanford GSB News

 

Today's Technology Must Do More than Merely Dazzle

October, 2003

Bruce Chizen, Adobe

Chizen

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—The technology industry is no longer the brash young kid on the block. As they mature, tech companies are facing the reality that large parts of their market are outside the United States, that customers are no longer dazzled just because a product is new, and that a global workforce is here to stay, Bruce Chizen, president and CEO of Adobe Systems, told a Business School audience.

"We once had the idea that if we built cool technology, people would come and buy it. We did that until '96-'97, when it became clear that in this environment you have to innovate way beyond technology," Chizen said.

In introducing Chizen at his Oct. 23 View from the Top speech, Business School Dean Robert Joss estimated that one of Adobe's products, Acrobat Reader, runs on 500 million computers worldwide. Tech companies generally sell more of their products outside the United States than to the domestic market, Chizen said.

"We can no longer build products for the U.S. market and hope other countries adopt them. We get 20 percent of our revenue from Japan, a society that is much different from ours. We have to tailor our products to the way they work, they collaborate, and communicate."

In addition to relying on international sales, firms like Adobe rely on international workforces. Trying to deal with the siren call of low-cost offshore labor is a major issue facing Chizen and his peers. Hiring engineers in a country like India or China, he said, is affordable and efficient but, almost more important, does not mean a decrease in quality.

"India and China are graduating more computer science majors than we are in the U.S. and that's scary," he said. "If you look out a number of years and look at K-12 math and science, we're behind India and China."

Compounding the problem, he said, is that many international students who are still drawn to the superior higher education programs in the United States now plan to return to their native countries after graduation.

In an era when a top-quality engineer may earn $15,000 in India as opposed to $90,000 in Silicon Valley, Chizen said, those hired for jobs in the United States will have to stand out. They will have to demonstrate leadership, a willingness to be a team player with coworkers who may be in different countries, and a passion for the job and desire to think outside the box. "If we just want someone to follow the rules, we can hire them elsewhere and for less money," he said.

As technology matures, its customers are also becoming more discerning. "A lot of corporations around the world have made huge investments in IT and now are looking for returns. Consumers are inundated with technology and are not interesting in spending as much as they once did on PCs or chips or the next version of software.

"Products must be geared toward business, but they must be much easier to use or consumers and industry alike won't be willing to buy them," Chizen advised.

—by Cathy Castillo