In a transition three years in the making, PLM software provider PTC today revealed its succession plans, announcing that chief operating officer Jim Heppelmann, 45, will become CEO at the start of the new fiscal year in October, at which time current CEO Richard Harrison will assume the role of executive chairman.
Today both executives painted the shift as the culmination of a well-plotted succession plan that will maintain the continuity of PTC’s strategy.
“I don’t think the customers are going to see a big difference, to be honest with you, and I don’t think they want to see a big difference,” Heppelmann told Managing Automation today. “The truth is, Dick put me in charge of the company strategy many years ago, so I don’t feel the need to take a strategic left turn.”
The succession “makes sense personally for me,” said Harrison, who has been with the company for 23 years and has served as its top executive since 2000. “I’ve said pretty consistently that a great replacement was sitting right there in the wings,” he explained. When Harrison took up residence in the corner office a decade ago, PTC was calling its solutions set “collaborative product commerce,” a term that gave way to “product lifecycle management” in the intervening years.