“We enable people and organizations to create engaging experiences.” Adobe’s brand promises to its customers. The design industry pundits have long touted the former as an industry driver within the annals of UX/UI and designers.
Large industry incumbents have been splurging their deep pockets to acquire a new breed of profitable and unprofitable startups to add to their commercial arsenal to stay relevant in the ever-changing dynamic business landscape.
Many companies in similar financial positions as Abode had bought emerging tech players before the latter became industry behemoths. Google, eBay, Facebook(aka Meta), Apple and Amazon have been using their prowess as public companies to solidify themselves as dominant players in commerce.
History has repeated itself once again. Adobe’s acquisition of Figma is a reminder of a time when Facebook paid a whopping amount of $ 19 billion to acquire Whatsapp. That move which Zuckerberg ployed was his bid to buy a ‘life insurance policy for the then Facebook.
When Facebook made the acquisition, many industry insiders called it a mistake. It turned out to be a masterstroke that the Facebook team deployed from their playbook.
Adobe’s acquisition of Figma is an insurance policy for the former company. Why? Recently, the former has been losing its edge over the coveted market it once dominated.
The young design professionals had been using Figma for their design needs, shunning Adobe as the “Kodak” of its space.
An important point arises here, though. The incumbents are not innovating anymore. Employee teams inside such organizations should be taking more time to innovate in coming up with new products to cater to the taste of the new generation of users.
Photo by Rubaitul Azad on Unsplash