The region continues to have the lowest business start-up rate in the country.

BBC: Call for extra powers to help North tackle jobs divide

"To get out the current financial situation, we have to significantly raise the start-up rate over the next 20 to 30 years, " he says.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Lately, his Lean LaunchPad course at Stanford has been the model for an intriguing pilot programme called Innovation Corps (or I-Corps for short) which seeks to turn the traditional Silicon Valley start-up model on its head, and thereby reduce the woeful failure rate of new ventures.

ECONOMIST: Innovation

But even complicated tasks rate only a few dollars. iConclude, a software start-up aiming to automate corporate technical support, is using the Turk to evaluate developers who can help write its repair tools.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

This is why Mr Hollande will start by cutting the retirement age for some workers to 60, putting the top marginal income-tax rate up to 75%, raising taxes on wealth, inheritance and dividends, increasing the minimum wage and making it much harder for employers to fire workers.

ECONOMIST: France��s president