Prague

AN hour's drive from Bratislava, engineers are working up a prototype reminiscent of James Bond's extrication of a Soviet defector from the Slovak capital to Austria in the 1987 film, The Living Daylights. Instead of a one-man capsule, the 10-foot-high real-life version is designed to haul up to 50 passengers through a Hyperloop tube within eight minutes to Vienna.

C2i, the 11-year-old company started by Patrick Hessel, is one of dozens of on-the-edge firms popping up in recent years in the central European nation that is now seeing entrepreneurs trained abroad return to their homeland. They are taking advantage of cheap land and skilled workers to develop products from the Hyperloop capsule and plasma drills to flying cars.