Rod Turner, Chief of Knowledge Adventure, Quits

Rod Turner, president and chief executive of La Crescenta-based multimedia software firm Knowledge Adventure, has left the company. The firm’s chairman and founder, Bill Gross, will assume Turner’s duties on an interim basis.

Turner, an experienced manager of high-growth companies whom Gross himself helped recruit last year, said he and Gross had fundamental disagreements about how to guide the fledgling educational software firm. “Basically, we weren’t able to agree on the way forward,” Turner said.

But both sides said the conflict was mainly one of style. Gross, who has a reputation as a creative genius, is said to have clashed with Turner’s more traditional management style. Knowledge Adventure, whose investors include Paramount Communications Inc. and AT&T;, is regarded as one of the most promising start-ups in the fast-growing multimedia industry.

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