Troubled Alphabet, Inc. smart home devices subsidiary Nest, Inc. has a new Chief Executive Officer after a decision by Founder Tony Fadell to leave the position.

Fadell made the announcement in a post on the Nest Blog, describing his decision to leave as bittersweet, but noted that he would be staying on at Alphabet as an advisor to Chief Executive Officer Larry Page.

“Although this news may feel sudden to some, this transition has been in progress since late last year and while I won’t be present day to day at Nest, I’ll remain involved in my new capacity as an advisor to Alphabet and Larry Page,” Fadell wrote. “This will give me the time and flexibility to pursue new opportunities to create and disrupt other industries – and to support others who want to do the same – just as we’ve done at Nest. We should all be disrupters!”

Replacing Fadell is Marwan Fawaz, a former Chief Executive Officer of Motorola Home, the division of the once Google-owned company responsible for consumer set-top boxes and cable modems.

“Marwan’s extensive technology and engineering knowledge, his experience with global service providers, as well as his background in connected home platforms will be valuable in continuing our trajectory, especially in scaling the business, working with our partners, and supporting our enterprise channels,” Fadell generously added. “I have no doubt that the company will continue to flourish under his guidance and can’t wait to see the innovations currently in development brought to market.”

Challenge

Fawaz takes the reigns at Nest at a time many believe to be a crisis for the company due to its inability to bring new and innovative products to market, as well as having previously shipped faulty devices that had to be recalled.

Whether entirely at fault or not, much of the company’s dysfunction was blamed on Fadell, who was described as an obsessive micromanager insisting on employees reworking features and polishing product designs beyond any reasonable amount, as well as treating employees poorly, let alone customers, who were left with disabled devices when Fadell decided to intentionally cripple them.

Perhaps the best demonstration that something was seriously wrong at Nest came when its Alphabet-owned sibling Google decided to go it alone on an Amazon.com, Inc. Echo competitor, despite smart home devices supposedly being Nest’s domain; even Google didn’t trust Fadell to deliver the goods.

That said, it may not be too late for Fawaz to turn the company around, be it an enormous challenge.

His first task will be to restore confidence to employees that the company is once again aiming to deliver, and then get to work actually bringing innovative products to market.

It will be interesting to see how he goes.

Image credit: leweb3/Flickr/CC by 2.0