Adobe inc. is a multinational computer software company which is focused on creating multimedia, creativity software products and digital marketing software. They are headquartered in San Jose, California and the CEO is the experienced Shantanu Narayen, who has held his position since 2007.
As of 2020, Adobe employed over 22,600 people, with around 40% of them working in the San Jose headquarters. The company has achieved great financial success in recent years, gaining over $11bn gross profits in 2019, a significant rise from $9bn the year before, and $7bn the year before that.
Adobe’s Story
The company was founded by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. That same year, Steve jobs offered to buy the company for $5 million dollars, which the founders refused. In the end Jobs agreed to purchase 19% of the company for 5 times the company value. Adobe’s early success was due to PostScript and Adobe Illustrator which were essential for many other companies in a new generation of computer advancements. Due to this early success, Adobe joined the NASDAQ Composite index in 1986. The company continued to release new programs such as Photoshop, PDFs, Acrobat and Premiere.
Since 2011, Adobe began to regularly acquire other businesses, starting with Nitobi Software in October of that year. In May 2018, Adobe stated they would buy Magento Commerce for $1.68 billion. At the end of the year they also announced their acquisition of marketing automation software company Marketo. Just 4 months later they announced yet another acquisition of Allegorithmic, a 3D texturing company.
Adobe’s Mission Statement
The Adobe mission statement is to “‘move the Web forward’ whilst giving ‘Web designers and developers the best tools and services in the world.'” Here you can see Adobe’s commitment to providing for institutions and the public to help them communicate and perform daily tasks more efficiently. This helps to explain why they can be seen as one of the best and most successful innovators in the technology industry. The company is perhaps even largely responsible for the direction that the Web has taken over the last three decades along with other large corporations such as Microsoft and Google.
As technology has changed over the years, so too has our need to transfer information seamlessly across all our devices and to electronically download documents. Adobe has been active in these areas, for example, providing PDFs which are the best tool for sending files that are intended to be printed out as documents. In recent years, Adobe has redesigned their business model with their Creative Cloud service. This allows customers to transfer files automatically and more importantly, it allows customers to buy Adobe’s products on a subscription basis.
Adobe’s Vision Statement
Adobe helps their customers “transform their communications into engaging experiences”. The company creates these experiences by “revolutionizing how the world engages with ideas and information” in a number of ways:
- Creativity for all: Adobe’s Creative Cloud offers creativity to individuals, whether they’re a demanding professional or high school students.
- Empowering digital business: Businesses count on Adobe to help them meet the challenges of digital transformation. With Adobe, they can can use unique solutions to deliver corporate growth.
- Accelerating document productivity: Adobe pioneered the paper-to-digital transformation with the invention of PDFs, making life for the customer better,
- Imagining tomorrow to give our customers an edge: They constantly look to the future to give innovative solutions to support the next generation.
Adobe’s Core Values
The corporate culture of Adobe is multi-award winning, due to the unique environment where Adobe “invests in their staff and the community with a great sense of corporate responsibility” as well as generous incentives for employees.
“Integrity is at the heart of Adobe and they take great pride in their commitment to sincerity and honesty. A strict code of ethics is upheld by senior officers which ensures full, fair and accurate disclosure of information; as well as ample opportunity for staff to question and report possible violations of these policies.”
A goal of Adobe is to base their business around a genuine, exceptional, innovative and involved culture. These are the core values of the company.
- Genuine: Adobe takes time to listen and help people, whether they are a professional customer or an individual of a younger generation.
- Exceptional: The company was founded on excellence. They have been the leaders in digital media and content since their foundation. They ensure that their brand is exceptional by inspiring employees to strive for excellence.
- Innovative: Adobe strives to bring innovation to create and improve the customer experience and help them share their work to other employees in their company, or between individuals.
- Involved: Adobe makes sure they work to include the leadership, employees, customers and the wider community. In particular, they help the wider community by contributing their products to over 15,000 non profit organisations and they sponsor and recruit within underrepresented minority communities.