Clark Gilbert is president and CEO of the Deseret News Publishing Company and Deseret Digital Media. But before he took over the Salt Lake City-based newspaper and television company, he was professor of entrepreneurial management at the Harvard Business School, where he worked with disruptive innovation pioneer Clayton M. Christensen. He was able to put many of Christensen’s theories into practice, revitalizing a 162-year-old newspaper that had been hard hit by the drop in advertising revenue.
In a discussion at the Nieman Foundation moderated by 2013 Nieman Fellow Ludovic Blecher, the executive director and editor in chief of Liberation.fr, Gilbert discussed how he rebuilt the company’s advertising structure, overcame the clash of cultures between digital and traditional media, and relearned some of the lessons he had once taught in the classroom.