I've spent some time working with Parisian based companies. To add to the above... - It is VERY expensive to fire people. Something like 2 years of salary?

I've spent some time working with Parisian based companies. To add to the above... - It is VERY expensive to fire people. Something like 2 years of salary? - The taxes rates can be borderline extortion. People are happy paying them because they see value, but it hurts competitiveness. - There's more of a feel of us (workers) versus them (management) as opposed to esprit de corps. You see this in employee attitude as well as the government's view of business. This is all a shame, because outside of work, it's a fascinating country, with great food and culture. The academic system produces a lot of well trained engineers that are very good at Math. (This is why most financial software firms either have a French office, French roots, or lots of French engineers) What's this mean? I hope the project succeeds, but I don't think it will. It sounds like Malaysia's multimedia corridor of many years back. Unfortunately you can't centrally plan innovation.