The next CEO of Adobe is a pivotal moment for its future.

If I’m sitting on the board of ADBE and my stock is down -35% in past one year and -43% in past 5 years, I am **not** going for a safe bet. In my view, an internal candidate is a safe bet. David Wadhwani (President, Creativity & Productivity Business) has been viewed as heir apparent for years and Adobe has shipped a lot of generative features (Firefly, Generative Fill, etc.) with him at the helm. But I think its a mistake to tap him. An internal candidate plays by the rules, does not have the gravitas to pull off a major pivot, knows too much on what has worked in the past and tends to bias towards it. I want an external CEO with proven background in building out AI-native infra. So he/she can totally transform my company by ripping out the core and making bold decisions to redefine the future. The board knows that the network effects, product stickiness and embedded workflows of Adobe will buy them a couple years. But after that if they still haven’t pivoted, then it’s certain death. My bet is on external candidate. Adobe cannot afford to have a leader that simply infuses AI with its existing workflows. They need to totally redefine their product offering. There's a difference between AI-native and what we see every day, AI-integrated. Adobe is an example of AI-integrated, not AI-native, because every AI feature it ships exists to make existing tools slightly better rather than rethinking what those tools should be in the first place. For example, Generative Fill in Photoshop is an AI-integrated feature where the workflow stays the same but is an upgraded feature. AI-native means the product could not exist without the intelligence at its core. The whole workflow, interface and business model would be designed around AI as the foundation, not an add on. So going back to the Photoshop example, if it was an AI-native platform, it wouldn't have a canvas in the first place. You could describe what you want, the system generates it, then you'd specify any revisions you want. An ad for lets say a sneaker could be up within minutes with high-level of professionalism as using the original Photoshop product without AI.