Warnock, John Edward

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Warnock, John Edward

(1940-)
Adobe Systems Incorporated

Overview

Hailed as a "modern–day Gutenberg," after the man who invented moveable type, John E. Warnock revolutionized the field of visual communication with renowned graphic and multimedia software packages that sparked a desktop publishing revolution. Warnock founded Adobe Systems Incorporated, which pioneered the software technologies that allowed sharing of electronic documents between computers. Some of Adobe's software packages include Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe PageMaker, and Adobe Premiere. Warnock helped make the $1.3 billion company a widely copied model of integrity, technical excellence, and corporate responsibility; moreover, it is the second largest PC software company in the United States. Warnock, holder of six patents, is one of the most respected computer software innovators in the world.

Personal Life

Warnock married his wife in 1965, and the couple has three adult children. Warnock enjoys painting and photography, skiing, hiking, non–fiction books, and movies. The software developer and entrepreneur also collects first editions of books about famous innovators, including Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Copernicus.

Warnock is a distinguished member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the Utah Information Technology Association, and a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is a board member of the Octavo Corporation, Entrepreneurial Board Advisory Committee, the American Film Institute, the Folger Shakespeare Museum, and past chairman and current board member of the Tech Museum of Innovation. His long list of awards include the Entrepreneur of the Year award from Merrill Lynch, Ernst & Young and Inc. magazine; PC Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award for Technical Excellence; the Cary Award from the Rochester Institute of Technology; Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Utah; the Corporate Outstanding Achievement Award and the Distinguished Service to Art and Design International Award, both from Rhode Island School of Design. He was inducted into the Computer Reseller News Hall of Fame as one of the "Ten Revolutionaries of Computing" in 1998.

Warnock was born on October 6, 1940, in Salt Lake City, Utah. In an interview with Jill Wolfson of the San Jose Mercury News and high school student Denise Cobb, Warnock described his early scholastic aptitude: "When I was in the 9th grade, I flunked 9th grade algebra. I couldn't cope with 9th grade algebra. And then I remember taking an aptitude test when I was a sophomore in high school, and they said, 'You should probably consider not going to college.' Then they said, 'Well, what would you like to do?' At that time I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I said 'Well, maybe something in engineering.' And the counselor told me, 'Your probability of having any kind of success in any engineering–related activity is probably zero.'" In high school, Warnock got back on track due to a particularly influential teacher named Barton, who made math fun and exciting for his students, almost all of whom went on to get master's degrees and Ph.Ds. "That was the thing that turned my life around," he told Wolfson and Cobb. About his early, misguided counseling, Warnock added, "Students should have a healthy skepticism about what they're told."

Transforming into a straight A student in math and science, Warnock went on to attend the University of Utah, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in math and philosophy in 1961, a Master's degree in math in 1964, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science in 1969. In 1963, just before receiving his Master's degree, Warnock took a job recapping tires at Firestone Rubber. He hated it and quickly applied for a position at IBM the same year. He was trained on punch–card equipment before handling programming. The following year, Warnock took a job teaching math with his alma mater. Warnock decided a teaching salary was not enough to support a new family so, in 1965, after his marriage, he started his career in computers in the University of Utah's Computer Science Department. After completing his Ph.D., Warnock and his family relocated to Vancouver, Canada, when he got a job at Computime Canada Ltd. The small start–up company didn't last long, and Computime folded in 1970, but in USC Networker, Warnock called his brief time there a "great experience." From there, Warnock moved to nearby Toronto and took a job with Computer Sciences Corp. until 1971. The family then left for Maryland when Warnock went to work at Goddard Space Flight Center in Washington, D. C., until early 1972. Warnock then took a new job that year, working with supercomputers as head of operating systems development, at Evans & Sutherland Corp. at the Ames Research in California. He later worked on real–time flight simulators with the company. In 1978, after E&S asked him to relocate to Utah, Warnock decided instead to stay in the San Francisco Bay area and took a job at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where he was principal scientist. At Xerox PARC, Warnock helped develop graphic imaging standards. While at both E&S and Xerox PARC, he developed a language that became the basis for PostScript.

Career Details

Warnock was frustrated by Xerox PARC's reluctance to build and support a printing standard based on the early version of PostScript called JaM. In 1982, with Xerox coworker Dr. Charles Geschke, Warnock founded Adobe Systems Inc. The founders named the company after a creek that ran behind their homes. Warnock's aim for the company, which then had just two employees, Warnock himself and Geschke, was to develop applications for their PostScript page description language. They were able to get $2.1 million in seed money to launch Adobe over two years from the company Hambrecht & Quist. Warnock made a now–famous quote when the company first started that Adobe would never have more than 50 employees. He told USC Networker, "Obviously we have never expected the success we have achieved. When you start a company you do all kinds of contingency planning for failure events. You never do much planning for success." The company went public in 1986, trading on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol ADBE.

Warnock's strategy for Adobe was to focus on producing products with the technology they created. He told USC Networker, "People are only given extraordinary rewards when their technology makes it into a product." In 1993 Adobe introduced their Adobe Acrobat. In a news release, Warnock said, "Acrobat will fundamentally change the economics of information by removing the critical barriers that have kept electronic documents from moving between computers. Today's paper–based information is hampered by the physical media. Acrobat technology liberates information and the flow of ideas and allows it to enter the electronic age." Other products sprung from Adobe's creativity was the document–layout product Adobe PageMaker, for creating documents that are heavy on graphics and don't change often, including magazines, newsletters, and school yearbooks. After the company's acquisition of Frame Technology, they also owned FrameMaker, a similar desktop publishing product for creating and maintaining documents that required constant updating, like manuals. Adobe grew its company with other acquisitions, including Aldus Corporation and Ceneca Communications.

Warnock wisely began focusing on the Internet during the mid–1990s. In 1996 Adobe had 2,200 employees worldwide with 2 million registered users for their main applications. Accounting for unregistered users, an estimated 10 million were using the company's Adobe Acrobat alone. Acrobat, which utilizes the portable document format (PDF) that helps businesses convert print document into digital ones, has since became prevalent on the Web. By the late 1990s, Adobe Photoshop was used by 93 percent of Web developers. PageMaker 6 was released. Adobe also launched a Web design software platform, Adobe GoLive. The company's range of products used in Web, print, and video publishing included Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe LiveMotion, Adobe Premiere, Adobe FrameMaker, and Adobe After Effects. The products were designed to be used by a wide variety of customers with a range of skill–levels, from graphic designers to home users.

Chronology: John Edward Warnock

1940: Born.

1969: Received Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science.

1978: Began as principal scientists at Xerox PaloAlto Research Center.

1982: Founded Adobe Systems, Inc. with Charles Geschke.

1986: Adobe went public.

1993: Adobe Acrobat was introduced.

1996: Adobe had 2 million registered users.

1999: Introduced InDesign professional publishing platform.

2000: Adobe had sales of more than $1.2 billion and employed 2,900 people.

2001: Stepped down as CEO.

Adobe was threatened by a hostile takeover by rival Quark in the late 1990s. Although Adobe's revenue at the time, $912 million, dwarfed Quark's $200 million, Adobe was restructuring, and its stock prices had almost dropped in half. The takeover bid failed, but a shaken Adobe vowed to build its strength. In 1999 the company came up with InDesign, a product for the professional publishing arena to compete with Quark's dominance in that area. In the new millennium, the company is focused on the next wave of innovation, Network Publishing. Network Publishing involves making visually complex information available to anyone, anywhere, on any device. In 2000, Adobe had sales of more than $1.2 billion and employed 2,900 people. After founding the company nearly 20 years earlier, Warnock stepped down as CEO in 2001, remaining as cochairman of the board with Geschke. In addition to his technical and business leadership, Warnock has contributed articles to many technical journals and industry magazines and is a frequent speaker on computer and publishing industry issues.

Social and Economic Impact

Warnock's contribution to computer graphics, printing and publishing is legendary in the industry. Designing and marketing the tools for transforming paper documents to electronic and back again spawned the era of desktop publishing just in time for the age of the Internet. Of Adobe's influence, Michael P. McHugh said in USC Networker, "One would be hard–pressed to find a magazine, newspaper or even a site on the World Wide Web that has not, in some way, been stamped by Adobe technology." Adobe is indeed prevalent on a majority of web sites that were created or modified using one of Adobe's products like Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, GoLive, FrameMaker, or LiveMotion.

The entrepreneur built Adobe from a two–person venture into the second largest PC software company in the United States with over $1 billion in revenue. Millions of users worldwide turn to Adobe software to create a variety of projects on paper, the Internet, and video. In 2001 the San Jose Mercury News gave Warnock and his Adobe cofounder more lofty praise: "In Greek mythology, Prometheus brought fire from the gods and gave it to humankind. When John Warnock and Chuck Geschke founded Adobe they did something similar, bringing the power of publishing to anyone with a computer. Others have described the pair as modern–day Gutenbergs whose entrepreneurship transformed the PC from a calculating machine to an artistic platform."