Thanks to its excellent universities, international transport links and super bright, skilled workforce, this former mining city in Germany’s Ruhr valley has been transformed into a hive for hi-tech firms.

Chile, the Barents Sea, Haifa, a soon-to-be gentrified Berlin neighbourhood and a happening street in Istanbul. Monocle explains why these are the places to watch for business opportunities in 2011. Plus, what’s in store…

Overhauling a business can go two ways: it either backfires badly – BA and Coca-Cola know how that feels – or it radically improves profits. Monocle meets 10 businesses taking the gamble and suggests 10 industries in need…

Psychotherapy vouchers for French workers, an interview with Iceland's "minister of ideas", and why renewables are an attractive investment in hard times.

Malta, the Mediterranean island with a population of 400,000, is booming thanks to EU membership and its adoption of the euro. It’s also perfectly poised to exploit renewed trade with Gaddafi’s Libya.

If you’re entering 2008 with a handsome bonus, a generous inheritance or a fat payoff, *Monocle* has identified 10 business opportunities worthy of investment. A mixture of fresh ideas and proven concepts ready for other…

Bremen has always been an independent, outward-looking city, but that didn’t help it when the port’s traditional shipbuilding trade went into decline. Now the city has reinvented itself as a hi-tech hub. With low rents, a…

Brunei prepares to cash in on the global halal food market, the world's largest wind turbine arrives, and an Italian ice cream maker goes green.

The people of Yogyakarta are a contented lot and they have good reason. The city is not only the cultural heart of Java but thanks to leaders who have stamped out corruption, it’s a vibrant business centre too.

Offering an alternative lifestyle to Shanghai and Beijing, Dalian is a vibrant student city with an easier pace of life. You might not have heard of it but this is one of the world’s biggest outsourcing centres.

In the developed world, the service industry is a fast-growing driver of the economy, so it pays to have well-trained, highly skilled staff. While the MBA can boost your credentials in the business arena, Monocle asks…

George Town, on the Malaysian island of Penang, was a colonial trading hub but after the Second World War it lost out to Hong Kong and Singapore. Now its faded Art Deco villas and relaxed pace of life are luring a new…

The coffee shop favoured by US troops, Dubai's building bottleneck, and mobile firms reveal their new organic deli.

Pinkberry yoghurt is one of those American franchise ideas – think soup, coffee and juice bars – that seem so obvious, you want to kick yourself for not having bought in at the beginning. The growth of the franchise has…

From Portugal's telecoms giants to a Brazilian flip-flop maker, we pick 15 companies making waves in Portuguese-speaking world and beyond.