Visit the area around Vicenza, in the north-east, which has an array of small family companies, or look at ceramics companies in the cluster around Sassuolo, in the centre of Italy, and you will be struck by the energy and skills on display.

ECONOMIST: A survey of Italy

Going so small also leads to some truly uncommon rackmounting -- team lead Simon Cox and his son James grouped the entire array in two towers of Lego, which likely makes it the most adorable compute cluster you'll ever see.

ENGADGET: Supercomputer built from Raspberry Pi and Lego, managed by humans rather than Minifigs