Table of Contents

The Last Chapter: How Come Nobody Thought of That Before?
Your Brain as a PC
Your Imagination: The Tool That Is Beyond Our Imagination
Taking the Imagination Elevator to the Land of Unlimited Possibilities
Creativity in Action: Stories to Aspire and Inspire
So—How in the World Do You Create?
Build Your Creativity Muscles: 10 + 1 Exercises for Heavy-Lifting Change-the-World Innovators
What Scholars Know about Creativity: A Journey Through the Literature
On Becoming Walter Mitty: The Fun of Imagining
Epilog: There Is Always More Than One (Right) Way…
Index

About the Author

Arie Ruttenberg is co-founder of Israel’s largest advertising agency, where for over 30 years he applied his creative skills daily. Later, he started a new enterprise, Club 50, which provides tools to those 50 and over for reinventing their lives. At present he is working on a new startup, Creativity Bank.

Arie was born in Tel Aviv, on August 8, 1948, less than three months after the state of Israel achieved independence. His parents were Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Israel a year before his birth, from the European death camps. He was born at the height of Israel’s War of Independence, and at the age of 8, experienced another war, the Sinai Campaign (1956). At age 19, as a combat soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, he was seriously injured by an explosive device that damaged both his sight and his hearing, and was declared 100 percent disabled. He ascribes his creativity and innovative skills to the instability and the hardships in his life, which forced him constantly to search for original solutions in order to deal with reality.

Despite the physical challenges Ruttenberg began to study economics and management at the Technion, Haifa, in 1969. Technion is Israel’s leading science and technology university, and among the best institutions of its kind in the world. At Technion, Ruttenberg met Shlomo Maital, one of his economics instructors, and with him researched and published an article that was to become a path-breaking paper in behavioral economics and experimental economics. From that time, they have remained in close touch, stimulating each other with ideas on creativity, in the course of their careers.

On completing his Technion studies, Ruttenberg chose to enter an industry that gave full expression to his creativity, the world of advertising. After a meteoric career of only four years, during which he became a partner in an ad agency, he opened his own advertising agency, in 1979, at age 31, together with some partners. The ad agency Kesher Barel became the largest of its kind in Israel, and in 2005 was sold to the global ad agency McCann Erickson. Today, McCann Erickson Israel is the largest, and leading, ad agency in Israel and has one of the best global networks. With his retirement from the advertising industry in 2005, at age 57, Ruttenberg decided to contribute to a revolution in thinking that seemed especially vital to him at the time—adapting the modern lifestyle to the new reality of lengthening life expectancy. With his creative vision, that we are at the onset of a new era, People Live Twice, he wrote a book by that name, and then launched a company with several friends, to implement his vision. The company, Club 50, is successful and Ruttenberg continues to be active in implementing his vision of second careers for those over 50.

Ruttenberg continues his activities in Club 50, which supplies new social contacts, financial services, health services, leisure services, and more through an advanced communications network that includes a web site, a wide span of newsletters, cell phone communications, and a new magazine. Ruttenberg published in 2008, together with Psychologist Carlo Strenger, the book Why Not Live Twice. A decade earlier, he published the book It’s OK Everything’s Not OK, an illustrated book for children, in Hebrew, now available in English as well.

  Shlomo Maital is Senior Research Fellow at the Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies, Technion, and Professor (Emeritus) at Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. He was the academic director of TIM–Technion Institute of Management, Israel’s leading executive leadership development institute, and a pioneer in action-learning methods, from 1998 to 2009, working with over 200 high-tech companies and startups. He was summer visiting professor for 20 years at the MIT Sloan School of Management for Management of Technology MSc program, teaching over 1,000 research and development (R&D) engineers from 40 countries. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 12 books, including Cracking the Creativity Code (2014), Technion Nation (2012), Global Risk/Global Opportunity (SAGE, 2009), Innovation Management (SAGE, 2007; 2nd edition, 2012), and Executive Economics (1994), translated into seven languages. He was co-founder of SABE–Society for Advancement of Behavioral Economics.

 

Reviews

"Who has not fantasized about inventing a world-changing technology and becoming overnight a star like Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates? Ruttenberg and Maital's new book Cracking the Creativity Code delightfully shows that the talent of creativity can be mastered and developed and is not a privilege for just a few lucky ones. One just has to take the 'Elevator' and follow Zi-Zo-Zi, the angel of creativity and the authors' instructions in order to develop and train the 'creativity muscles'.I enthusiastically recommend this book to all who would like to learn about the talent of creativity and how to master it." -- Professor Peretz Lavie President, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology "After you read this fun book and discover the power of your creative mind, you will buy more copies as gifts for your friends." -- Professor Dan Shechtman "Imagination is caged within everyone of us. This book gives us simple tools to unlock it and innovate." -- David (Dadi) Perlmutter "Competitive intensity is forcing every business to look at-what to change, what to change to, and how to change? The winning answers, obviously, depends on the level of creativity in a given organization. This book, with the simple yet powerful principle of Zi-Zo-Zi, coupled with many inspiring stories and many interesting exercises is a great read in helping businesses to democratize creativity, a critical ingredient required to win in the market place." -- L.R. Natarajan "Today's world demands an innovative bent of mind to succeed. With easy to follow exercises and plenty of real-world examples, Arie Ruttenberg and Shlomo Maital set the readers on a truly rewarding path that helps them unlock their creative potential." -- J.V. Ramamurthy "Not just another book on innovation!!! What sets this book apart is the innovative manner in which the process of creativity and innovation is dissected and presented. There is an art in everything we do while we sometimes fail to recognize the element of science in it. This book brings out the 'how to' of innovation and thus making it appealing to individuals who want to unleash their creativity as well as those who want to unleash the potential for innovation in their organization. Early on in the book, the concepts are brought out through an engaging fairy tale, making it refreshingly practical and simple." -- Thulasiraj Ravilla "The literal elevator into the land of imagination presented by the author is reminiscent of the elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl - except this elevator ride starts with the promise of a golden ticket to creativity." -- Shikhar Mohan [The book] delightfully shows that the talent of creativity can be mastered and developed and is not a privilege for just a few lucky ones. One just has to take the 'Elevator' and follow Zi-Zo-Zi, the angel of creativity and the authors' instructions in order to develop and train the 'creativity muscles'...I enthusiastically recommend this book to all who would like to learn about the talent of creativity and how to master it. -- Professor Peretz Lavie