The site, free student question and answer service Piazza, is the brainchild of former Facebook, Kosmix and Oracle engineer Pooja Sankar, who felt a need for students to be able to connect with each other around their classes.

FORBES: Piazza's Q-And-A Website Goes Back To School

Merloni can connect machines to a service centre via a phone line, making possible off-site billing, testing and the dispatch of an engineer who knows what needs fixing in advance.

ECONOMIST: Manufacturing in Europe: How to make it | The