James Gilmore

James H. Gilmore is co-founder of Aurora, Ohio-based Strategic Horizons LLP, a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings. Gilmore collaborates with management teams to grasp the nature of the emerging “Experience Economy” and envision their role in it—whether it be staging experiences, guiding transformations, or mass customizing any economic offering. He is recognized for his expertise in experience design and customer experience management. Gilmore is a frequent speaker at professional society and trade association conferences, as well as executive education programs of individual companies. His ideas have been published in many of the world’s leading publications, including the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Investor’s Business Daily among others.

Gilmore is also co-author with B. Joseph Pine II of "The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage." The book demonstrates how companies, from a myriad of industries, are finding their goods and services commoditized with customers increasingly spending their money on experiences—memorable events that engage customers in an inherently personal way. It also shows how businesses can create value by embracing theatre as an operating model to stage unique experiences that ultimately transform those who participate in them. As a follow-up, Pine and Gilmore edited "Markets of One: Creating Customer-Unique Value through Mass Customization." Additionally, Gilmore co-authored "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want," which explores the management of authenticity in business and its relevance in modern consumerism.

Gilmore began his career with Procter & Gamble and then spent over ten years consulting with Cleveland Consulting Associates and Computer Sciences Corporation, heading up CSC Consulting’s process innovation practice. A Batten Fellow at The Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia, he previously served as the 2002-2003 Dean Helen LeBaron Hilton Endowed Co-chair at the College of Family & Consumer Sciences at Iowa State University. He has also lectured at Case Western's Weatherhead School of Management, Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, and Rochester Institute of Technology's College of Applied Science and Technology. Gilmore also teaches courses on the Experience Economy and cultural hermeneutics at several universities, including Westminster Seminary California and the Savannah College of Art & Design. He is a certified instructor in the lateral thinking methodologies of Dr. Edward Debono and serves on the faculty of The Institutes for Organization Management for the US Chamber of Commerce, working with both for-profit and non-profit enterprises to foster innovative thinking.