Starting out life as a cooking oil manufacturer, India-based Wipro has moved with the times, evolving in recent decades into a technology conglomerate. And, it is not afraid of even more change, as it has shown in recent years, by increasing its international presence and restructuring its sales team.

Investors are looking beyond Romanian capital Bucharest to cities such as Timisoara, Cluj Napoca, Brasov and Constanta, and finding growing economies, skills and business capacity. 

Popular before the crisis, Romania has seen a dearth of inward investment since 2008. The downturn has been blamed on political turbulence and a lack of credit, problems still evident, but a flurry of deals at the start of the year suggests that investors are once again looking to take advantage of the country's attractive talent pool and technological expertise.

Many investment promotion agencies are just as keen to court start-ups as they are large multinationals, but their approach to attracting these smaller, more fragile companies may benefit from being more hands off than with their larger, established counterparts.

The Chinese city of Tianjin may lie in the shadow of investment behemoths Beijing and Shanghai, but it is still at the forefront of the country’s high-tech focus, with the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area central to its strong FDI appeal.

Small, start-up businesses offer huge potential for the people of sub-Saharan Africa, but gaining access to funding and adequate infrastructure has not always been straightforward. Are innovation hubs the answer?

Researchers say that a new city model – dubbed silicon city – can help foster innovation and has the capacity to transform cities, even, they stretch so far as to say, the economically destitute Detroit.