James Gilmore

As co-author of The Experience Economy: Updated Edition (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011), James H. Gilmore literally wrote the book that spawned worldwide interest in experience design, customer experience management, and experiential marketing Tom Peters has called The Experience Economy “a brilliant, absolutely original book.” Now published in eighteen languages, the book continues to find new readers across myriad industries as businesses find their goods and services commoditized and customers increasingly spending their time and money on experiences—memorable events that engage them in an inherently personal way.

Gilmore’s book, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (Harvard Business School Press, 2007), also co-authored with Joe Pine, contends that businesses must learn to manage authenticity as a distinct business discipline. Commodified, staged, and mediated, the world seems increasingly unreal to many people, who now want the real from the genuine, not the fake from some phony. Gilmore’s insights concerning this new consumer sensibility prompted Time magazine to dub the core of Pine & Gilmore’s thinking “synthetic authenticity” in its March 24, 2008 cover story featuring “10 Ideas That Are Changing the World.”

Gilmore is co-founder of Aurora, Ohio-based Strategic Horizons LLP. He has been described as “professional observer,” sought by enterprises around the globe for his expertise in conceiving and designing new ways of adding value to their economic offerings. He is a frequent keynote speaker, as well as workshop facilitator and executive coach.

Gilmore’s ideas have been featured in numerous articles on business strategy and innovation for such publications as the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Investors Business Daily, among others. He is also co-editor of Markets of One: Creating Customer-Unique Value through Mass Customization (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

He began his career with Procter & Gamble and then spent over ten years consulting with Cleveland Consulting Associates and Computer Sciences Corporation, heading CSC Consulting's process innovation practice before starting his own firm. Mr. Gilmore currently teaches a design course at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He is also a Batten Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, where he teaches course on the Experience Economy. Gilmore is also a Visiting Lecturer in Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, where he teaches a course on cultural hermeneutics. 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.

Gilmore is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BS in Economics.