There are a whole host of things that influence creativity, and I’ve written about a great number of them over the years.  The following things have been shown by research to impact our creative juices in some way:

• light levels, with bright light harmful to creativity
• noise levels, with a bit of background noise apparently useful
• caffeine levels, with coffee focusing our attention, thus making creativity harder
• boredom levels, with a degree of boredom apparently useful for creative thoughts
• even organized sport has been suggested to hamper creativity

As you can see, a lot of potential aids to creativity there.  What joins many of these things together is their propensity for letting our mind wander.  Too much focus appears to be the enemy of creativity.

Can beer play a role therefore?  The makers of The Problem Solver believe so.  It’s a drink that they believe will help people reach a creative peak, just so long of course as they don’t drink too heavily.

The makers believe that a bit of alcohol helps to reduce inhibitions, and they suggest that creativity tends to peak when we have an alcohol level of around 0.075%.

The beer is produced by the Danish company CP+B Copenhagen and is an India Pale Ale designed to provide just that level of alcohol.

Each bottle of the beer comes with an indicator designed to help drinkers reach this optimum level.  As the bottle is emptied, the scale indicates when the drinker should stop based upon their body weight.

So, for instance, a 60kg woman might need to drink half a bottle, whereas an 85kg man can enjoy the whole thing.

Suffice to say, it’s probably rare for drinkers to settle for just half a bottle (or indeed a single full one), but the company is organizing a number of brainstorming sessions to put their beer to the test.

We’re increasingly seeing companies take a more relaxed attitude to alcohol at work, so might we see them actively encourage employees to have a small drink before brainstorming?