Signing up Li Ka-shing as one of its investors will certainly help put SecondMarket on the map in Asia.

FORBES: Asian Heavyweights Bet On SecondMarket

The Soviet planners who re- drew the map in the 1920s divided Central Asia broadly along linguistic lines, hoping to construct nations from the various nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of desert and steppe by exaggerating the differences between their dialects.

ECONOMIST: Central Asia

But Asia appears prominently on the map when we talk about innovation.

FORBES: Success in Asia, When Innovation Isn't Enough

Genetic tests are now so cheap that Mr Goldin can draw us a map of how his own ancestors moved from east Africa 31, 000 years ago, across Arabia and through Central Asia before swinging back into northern Europe.

ECONOMIST: Migration