Poland's strength is in the same low- to medium-technology goods, such as furniture, shoes and processed foods, as those produced in struggling Greece, Portugal and Italy, putting Poland in direct competition with countries the euro zone is fighting to save.

WSJ: European Disunion: Euro's Allure Dims in Eastern Europe

Beyond fear and treating the event as a competition, networking nights often leave those attending in the same comfort zone they arrived in: see a person you know, spend the majority of the night by their side, and meet a few new people but not nearly as many as you hoped had you decided to branch off early and look solo.

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Now they are stuck with them and can do nothing to fight the competition, since Dubai is, in essence, a tax-free zone with access to cheap labour from the Indian subcontinent.

ECONOMIST: Aviation

While the country's economic engine has kept humming despite the ongoing euro-zone crisis, startups here face difficult conditions for securing funding, as well as plenty of competition for resources in a market where brand-new Berlin-based tech companies are considered on trend.

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It exposes them to competition from non-banks, and also sets a deadline of 2012 by which all payments in the euro zone must take no longer than one business day to the next.

ECONOMIST: Europe makes progress on a common payments system