John Shaw and Scott Sherrard founded Theatre of Ideas in 1999, recognising that ideas and original thinking are the routes to business success. Our mission was and is to awaken the creativity that too often lies dormant within organisations, to build imaginative teams, to inspire ideas, to maximise effectiveness of decision-making,, and to develop personal creative confidence.

Scott and John both have over twenty years experience of building and running companies in the creative industries sector. Scott, a Scotsman in England, previously managed two of the UK's largest advertising agencies and you can read enough about him elsewhere on the site.

John, an Irishman living in Scotland (to highlight our international claims) can be seen here mid-workshop. He previously founded and ran one of Scotland's leading design and marketing companies - Shaw Marketing & Design - for seventeen years, originally starting his business career working with Scott in marketing at Scottish & Newcastle Breweries.

Our combined expertise and interest in bringing together more traditional business skills with the added values identified as Emotional Intelligence has seen Theatre of Ideas grow rapidly both in type of client and variety of assignment. By integrating the approach based around theatre exercises with hard client objectives and issues, genuine breakthrough thinking is delivered; as are effective decision-making tools that are original and memorable. Sessions are enormously productive as well as being challenging, unique, and enjoyable.

Our exercises have also proved popular at conferences, where we've worked with many diverse audiences - international bankers in Geneva, textile designers, civil servants, professional sportsmen, and social workers.