Hunting the hero inside us

Can spoon bending and shamanism help business? Helen Jones finds out

The X Files is no longer confined to television but is being played out in boardrooms around the country. Psychics, shamans and spoon benders may not be obvious business advisers but several companies are seeking their help in a bid to become more successful.

Uri Geller, renowned in the Seventies for his spoon bending and thought transference powers and more latterly for trying to inspire the England football team during Euro 96, has been hired by a number of firms.

"A lot of the work I do is secret," he says. "Companies are worried about what sceptical shareholders might think, but I talk to a lot of big businesses. I have just come back from Japan where I have been involved in motivating staff. I have taught them how to use their dormant powers, and the directors say that the staff are now much more aware, confident and loyal."

Mr Geller has also worked with a number of international mining companies seeking gold, diamonds, coal and minerals. One of the few he says he is able to name is RTZ-CRA for whom he has used a dowsing technique to locate deposits. "There is more money to be made in finding metal than in bending it," he says. "I have worked with one Japanese corporation which gave me $1m (pounds 650,000) to find gold in Brazil. What is it to pay $1m to someone who might deliver something far more valuable?"

Most of Mr Geller's clients may prefer to remain anonymous for obvious reasons but others are quite happy to divulge information about some of the areas they are exploring.

Sony has set up an Institute of Wisdom in Japan where it is investigating aspects of the paranormal including extra-sensory perception, telepathy, spoon bending and X-ray vision. It is looking into the possibility of machines that might enable us to communicate telepathically and has recruited a number of people who claim to have paranormal powers.

A spokeswoman in Japan says that Masaharu Ibuka, Sony's founder, has long felt that "there is more to science and technology than what is repeatable, universal and objective." Perhaps understandably Sony in the UK is anxious to play down the work of the Institute of Wisdom fearing the ridicule of notoriously cynical British consumers. A weary spokesman says: "It's only part of an enormous amount of research and development we are involved in. We are not prepared to talk about it."

While Sony is looking into the future, Hasbro, the toy company, and Britvic, the makers of Robinson's soft drinks and Tango, are exploring the past. Both are using the services of a shaman steeped in ancient lore to investigate what makes their products successful and to examine "the souls" of their brands. Heather Campbell, who terms herself a "shamanic guidance consultant", has studied anthropology and spent 10 years with native American Indians learning the shamanic arts. Ms Campbell works with Wickens Tutt Southgate (WTS), a branding company, to help companies explore their intuitive feelings.

Paul Southgate, the chief executive, says: "We've abandoned the marketing text books and embarked on a trawl of all the disciplines that help us to better understand people - literature, psychology, history and anthropology. We feel that those ways of thinking that spread maximum light on people should also be the most useful in shedding light on brands." One exercise Ms Campbell uses involves sending participants out into the woods where they take a set number of paces and then focus on a given problem. She says that while some participants may feel uncomfortable it is effective.

Many companies may doubt the efficacy of these unorthodox techniques but it is an increasing trend, says Colin Carnall, director of programmes for the Henley Management College. "These things go in phases and I'm not against it. I don't think companies are desperate because they are trying them out. You could compare it to the Outward Bound courses everybody took in the 1980s."

According to Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology: "Some of these way-out methods may help people unfreeze and look at new ways of thinking, which can free-up the decision-making process."