(Michael P. Smith)

I am not stalking Anne Kirah, the dean of 180-degrees Academy in Denmark. She and I have crossed paths four times in 12 months – from Moscow to Paris – sometimes sitting on the same dais.

Kirah is a cultural anthropologist who worked for Microsoft before engaging in innovation training with the academy in Copenhagen. She brings a different perspective the media and a high level of energy. Her message has been consistent over the last year – in order for traditional media companies to be successful in the future, they must break through barriers that inhibit engagement with customers. These barriers include communication, culture, emotion and location. Her experience at Microsoft establishes one of her core principles – innovation and new product development come from teamwork, not individuals. I could quibble or debate some of her conclusions or, more specifically, her generalizations about newspapers, but I won’t dwell on them. Her heart is in the right place, and I like any perspective that shows hope for newspapers.

Here are some key points from Anne’s presentation to the International Newspaper Marketing Association’s meeting in Paris:

• Innovation begins when we take off our blinders in our business and think of aspirations and motivations of people in their daily lives
• We must speak the same language and culture of the people we are innovating for
• Stop thinking newspapers for a moment

She also said innovation comes from:

• Chaos and discomfort, being out of your comfort zone
• Learning to see things through new lenses
• Observing ordinary people and their everyday lives
• A willingness to build with these people
• Being humble and practicing humility
• Taking risks

She said her experiences points to a set of things that prevent companies from innovating:

• We are blinded by our education and our company culture
• Company cultures are toxic
• We have difficulties adapting to the rapidly paced world
• We ask the wrong questions

She says newspapers are not dying, they are changing – something we have been preaching at MMC for quite a while. She predicts that they can be more successful if they pay attention to the typical person's "pain points" – the dead time during the day in a person's life when they could really use a newspaper. She described a two-hour train ride in which she needed something to read as a personal pain point. She actually goes beyond that. The way she explains it makes it sound very similar to the NewspaperNext and Clayton M. Christensen approach using the phrase "jobs to be done." Both Kirah and N2 are very customer-focused in their approaches.

Like I said, I could argue her conclusions or points. I give her a lot of leeway because it is hard making a presentation for 300 people from different countries with the newspapers in all different stages of maturity.

I appreciate her customer-centric approach. She has said many times, that newspapers (and all businesses) need to let the customer create the product.

While our research may lead us to slightly different conclusions, my biggest point of departure is her use of the term "toxic culture." My academic friends refer to a body of literature that includes the toxic culture affect on parenting, education, marriage and other institutions. I am not that brainy. I react to the phrase as a defensive journalist. Kirah does not say it but the inference is that newsrooms are poison. I don't agree. I hate it when people blame newsrooms for the lack of growth or change. Newsrooms are resistant, they are perfectionist and they are skeptical, but not poison.

Those familiar with the volumes of research from the Readership Institute on newspaper cultures will find support for my point on newspaper culture. I would never call it toxic. Our years of research shows that it clearly is resistant – but newspapers made it that way. And now they have to remake it. On that point (and on many others) Kirah and I agree.