Our Founder
James Stewart is the founder and President of SHARPER COUNSEL LLC. He has three decades of multi-industry experience and brings a wealth of management expertise to bear on the improvement of high potential businesses.
During his tenure at Sharper Counsel, James has supported tens of companies in their quest for higher performance. From printing to music to sports to government and with companies as small as pre-revenue to hundreds of millions of dollars, his broad experience allows him to diagnose business issues and develop sustainable business solutions rapidly and effectively. His network of talented executives allows him to quickly identify specialize talent as required by your business.
James’ role as COO for Loud Technologies was to oversee supply chain activities, bring new products to market, and facilitate company growth and profitability. James helped Loud weather the recession of 2009/2010 through helping reduce cost structures by 30% and helping improve cash availability by tens of millions of dollars. As a result of a contract manufacturer bankruptcy, he led a team to rebuild the supply chain for 150 models of music products, simultaneously launching them into eight different suppliers around the world. This activity, along with a distribution re-design to provide late-point differentiation for the most popular products, made his time at Loud challenging, interesting and substantially rewarding.
The majority of James’ career was spent at Hewlett-Packard, where his last role was as Vice President / General Manager of a four hundred million dollar printing business unit. This role had end-to-end responsibilities spanning from market identification / business development, to technology / product development, to global marketing / sales. As a result of James’ leadership in this division, sales doubled and profits quadrupled and in the words of the HP CEO at the time “this business model must be replicated…”
James’ contributions to SHARPER COUNSEL clients are focused at executives and business unit leaders and he is particularly strong in business development, strategic planning, organization assessment, and technology commercialization. His various positions have brought a tremendous amount of international exposure, especially developing significant expertise around doing business in China and intellectual property protection. Formally trained as an engineer, James has held positions in product development, operations, and general management. You can find his LinkedIn account at www.linkedin.com/in/jimstewartsandiego .
