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School may be out, but innovation is in. This summer in Jerusalem, the Bloomfield Science Museum's new Innovation Ltd. exhibit celebrates and nurtures Israeli ingenuity. In addition to showcasing 50 of Israel's most famous inventions - including the cherry tomato, "disk on key" portable hard drives, the Epilady leg hair removal device and drip irrigation - Innovation Ltd. looks behind the scenes to explore what makes this little country a world leader in ideas, start-ups and inventions.

Many opine that the Jews are an inherently smart people, so it follows logically that the land of the Jews be filled with creative problem solving, but we at GoJerusalem.com cite the Jerusalem light rail project, slated to finally launch later this month after year upon year of delays, as evidence that Israeli ingenuity is a nuanced and complex beast. So what is it about Israel that makes it such a prime place for innovation, and why now?

"I don't think there is just one answer," Varda Gur Ben Shitrit, the museum's director of science and society, who also curated the exhibit, tells GoJerusalem.com. "In creating this exhibit, we have found that a lot of factors contribute to Israel's innovations. Some are due to the socio-political climate here. As a small country, we are constricted in many ways. There are many things we can't do, so we need to concentrate on other things."

Aside from the tiny-ness factor, Gur Ben Shitrit explains, "The climate also contributes. We don't have many natural resources, we have a lot of sun, and we need to find innovative ways to deal with these challenges. So where we are located, and our political situation contributes to it."

While Israel's compulsary military service is generally considered an unfortunate national security necessity, in the context of innovation, Gur Ben Shitrit points to its positive outcomes. "Often people who served in elite unites end up in hi-tech," she notes. "In addition to the need to create things for the army, the army provided a way for people to meet and exchange ideas before Facebook. There are also government strategies which helped to encourage innovation."

And now the Bloomfield Museum itself is getting in on the act with the children's Invention Workshop, one of the exhibit highlights. The workshop encourages visitors to think outside of the box - creating their own inventions with magnets, string and other science fair staples.

With an un-replicable combination of factors leading to the hotbed of innovation that is contemporary Israel, it's curious that the Bloomfield Science Museum has created an incubator within an incubator, attempting to yield spontaneity on command. "Creativity can be encouraged, asserts Gur Ben Shitrit. "While I think that some people are born with creativity, a lot of it is methodology - people can be taught. We are trying to do that with this exhibit. We are trying to actively encourage innovation. When there is an organized culture that teaches people to think outside the box, they will begin thinking outside the box. I think this is especially true of children - they can be taught to think creatively, and they can start looking at things differently."

Gur Ben Shitrit's goal is to give museum-goers "the tools they need to create something themselves, so that they too feel they are connected to this process of innovation. We are trying to show that it's not just people with big budgets who can innovate.... At the workshop, people have been making electrical devices and many other things. They then bring these innovations home as a souvenir both of the exhibit and of their own ability to see things differently."

Apart from the workshop, other exhibit highlights include the Transparent Studio, where Bezalel Academy graduates are on hand to teach a course on creativity innovation, with a focus on light and lighting design. Audience participation is solicited and encouraged. And for comedy performance lovers, an additional 20 NIS gets you into a performance of the Incubator Theater's Imagination Island, a light play about (what else?) innovation.