A new survey suggests Canada is one of the top three places in the world to start a business, with a culture that admires its entrepreneurs and the risks that they take.

Canada ranks just behind Indonesia and the United States, according to the newly released survey, which was conducted by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland for the BBC World Service in 24 countries around the world.

More than 24,000 survey participants were asked a series of questions about their perceptions of how hard it was to start a business and the way innovation was valued in their country.

The BBC survey said that Canadians generally took a favourable view of entrepreneurs, with 74 per cent of survey participants saying they believed people who started their own businesses were highly valued individuals.

Once upon a time, things didn't happen now, they happened later. Editing a document meant volleying back and forth over email or fax, meetings were something everyone had to be in the same place for and group communication on-the-go meant saying "hold on, let me call you right back" over and over. Then came the real-time Web.

If there's any one thing that the real-time Web has changed about the way we work, it's in communication and collaboration. Sure, we've had phones, faxes and even email for ages now, but the Web puts the full range of media into our hands and makes the office seem like a thing of the past.

In early May, a senior-level U.S. delegation representing US business and academia attended this year's "From Science to Business" Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Forum, now in its fifth year, closely monitors current trends in cooperation on innovation between academe and the private sector and was co-organize this year by a Russian EURECA grantee institution, the St. Petersburg University for Information, Technology and Optics (ITMO).

Details of the agenda can be view in Russian at www.fs2b.ru.

This year's Forum was attended by 206 individuals, representing universities, governments, and private investors from 70 cities across 10 countries. Sessions took place over three days, with EURECA-sponsored sessions on "university innovation for social good" delivered by US EURECA delegates from UCLA, as well as additional presentations and an all-day workshop conducted by the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds and "Innovation America".

Every first-time entrepreneur, or even an experienced founder stepping into a new business area, needs a mentor. Nothing you have ever done raises so many questions, or has the potential to be so fulfilling, or so risky, as starting a new business for the first time. A mentor is a confidant who has been there and done that, and is willing to guide your steps.

In case you think mentors are only for “wimps,” you should know that most great entrepreneurs are quick to give credit to their mentors. Bill Gates always revered the early guidance he received from Dr. Ed Roberts, creator of the Altair 8800. Later, the great Warren Buffet became his mentor on many corporate matters.

In a reverse fashion, most of the recognized business gurus always found time to be a mentor. For a fortunate, surprisingly large club of CEOs, the late Peter F. Drucker was the single most lucid, eloquent, and encouraging force in their lives. With experts like this willing to help for free, why should you be the one to go it alone?

The human enterprise now consumes nearly 60 billion metric tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and plant materials, such as crop plants and trees for timber or paper. Meanwhile, the seven billionth person on the planet is expected to be born this year—and the human population may reach 10 billion by this century's end, according to the latest United Nations analysis. Hundreds of millions of people in Europe, North America and Asia live a modern life, which largely means consuming more than 16 metric tons of such natural resources—or more—per person per year. If the billions of poor people living today or born tomorrow consume anything approaching this figure, the world will have to find more than 140 billion metric tons of such materials each year by mid-century, according to a new report from the U.N. Enviromental Programme.

Figuring out how to do more with less is becoming a global necessity.

There's been quite a bit of talk lately in the innovation world about the importance of failure. In thinking about failure, I'm struck by the negative connotation. Though many of us consider failure a bad thing, sometimes there is an unintended consequence to failure. Namely, failure can lead to new thinking and innovation. I was reminded of the beauty of failure by my son.

I came home from a long week of work to find a table full of paper airplanes. Some were decorated with colorful drawings and some were left plain. While, some looked a bit battered and worn from their fair share of flight. Of all these airplanes, one stood out. It was an orange airplane that looked different from the rest.

The UK Intellectual Property Office has launched a strategy guide, Intellectual Asset Management for Universities, providing advice and information to help universities maximise the value of their intellectual property.

The guide includes contributions from partners including Research Councils UK, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Universities UK, the technology transfer body PraxisUnico and AURIL, the Association for University Research and Industry Links.

Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK, said the new guide will be an invaluable resource for vice-chancellors and senior managers in universities. “We hope that the guide will be a practical tool in helping universities to refine their IP strategies to maximise the benefits they gain from the intellectual assets created by their staff and students.”

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is joining forces with the venture capital firm Vesalius Biocapital and the technology transfer specialist Ascenion, in a €40 million fund set up to exploit the results of publicly-funded research.

The Spinnovator will select promising research that can form the basis of start-ups and then support these companies over five years.

“Adequate financing is an important prerequisite for innovation,” said Georg Schütte, State Secretary at the BMBF. “Our commitment to the Spinnovator is therefore part of our strategy to exploit the potential of top-level research in Germany, thereby promoting advances in healthcare and creating new jobs.”

Kickstarter started as a way for bands to fund projects without asking for money from Grandma. Now it’s the go-to site for thousands self-funded projects and the company recently surpassed the facilitating of $60 million in funding of random music albums, films, and gadgets created by ordinary people.

At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC John Biggs sat down with Kickstarter’s Yancey Stickler along with several successful Kickstarter gadget makers: Dan Provost from Glif and Cosmonaut, Rafael Atijas of the Loog, and Sean Bonner from Safecast. It was through the magic of Kickstarter that all these gadgets were funded and later created. It’s rather scary to think of a world without the Glif, right?

Any seasoned investor knows that past performance is not indicative of future returns. That is as true with public stocks as it is with venture capital firms. But if someone were to ask you to rank the top VC firms today based on their probability of success, how would you do it? Remember, looking at past returns won’t help you.

Chris Farmer, a VC at General Catalyst Partners, has come up with a method which he calls InvestorRank. Just as Google’s PageRank orders search results based on how many links each page gets from other sites, InvestorRank looks at the connections between VC firms. Whenever two VC firms co-invest in the same deal, that creates a bond between them. If one VC firm follows another one in a later round, that boosts the rank of the earlier investor.

YouTube is celebrating its sixth birthday this month, and the Google subsidiary is doing it partly by sharing some big numbers that underscore its overwhelming dominance in the online video streaming space.

YouTube says global daily views have gone up 50 percent in the past 12 months, which means they currently handle a whopping 3 billion views per day.

To put that in some perspective: comScore said last week that the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in roughly 5.1 billion viewing sessions for the entire month of April 2011 (which also tells you something about YouTube’s global appeal).

Being part of a small business incubator may be the perfect way to turn your idea into an actual company. David Monkman, the president of the National Business Incubation Association, tells us what entrepreneurs should look for before joining an incubator.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans will not buy pure plug-in electric cars — no matter what the cost — because they do not have the same range as a traditional car powered by an internal combustion engine, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll.

The new poll indicated that American respondents said they would not want to own “an electric car that you could only drive for a limited nu

mber of miles at one time.” The poll backs up several reports that indicate a growing concern about whether electric cars can attract mainstream buyers when they are not able to travel as far as a typical electric car.

Most electric cars have limited range when compared to hybrid-electric cars — which use both an internal combustion engine and battery technology to improve mileage — and cars powered by internal combustion engines. Nissan’s Leaf, for example, can only travel around 100 miles before it has to recharge. The supercharged Tesla Roadster can travel more than 200 miles, but it has a mammoth price tag that most consumers wouldn’t be able to afford — around $109,000 before environmentally-friendly credits.

Inside the multi-million dollar video streaming giant, Hulu, CEO Jason Kilar has gone to extraordinary lengths to subvert his own power: he has no office, has a makeshift desk partly built from empty boxes, and personally takes each new hire out to lunch to learn what he or she thinks the company can do better. "You will not attract and retain the world's best builders in a command-and-control environment," Kilar tells Fast Company.

Last weekend, Hulu and fellow Internet prodigy, Groupon, were honored at the WorldBlu Live conference for their unusually strong commitment to worker empowerment. We sat down with these web successes to understand the driving philosophy, small-team orientation, and straight-up weird employee morale boosters that lie at the foundation of their innovative products.

The artificial heart, video calls, virtual fitting rooms, shirts made of plastic bottles, wallpaper that changes color depending on the mood of the person in the room… Until recently one could only come across such things in a sci-fi movie or novel. Nowadays, however, not only are they becoming a part of our everyday reality, but are also affordable to people at large.

World industrial leaders like Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Nissan, or Google avoid banal ways of operating and move their products onto new planes, making billions in the process. The secret of their success boils down to one word: innovation. This concept, old as mankind itself, yet particularly popular today, brings leadership in the world market and billions in dividends to those who have grasped its essence.

Why isn’t a single Ukrainian company on this list? How and when could it appear? How can Ukrainian business become more successful, and the Ukrainian economy more competitive? The participants of the annual nation-wide conference, organized by the Lviv Business School at the Ukrainian Catholic University, tried to answer these and other questions. This year The Day was an information partner to this conference, whose full name was “Intro 2011. Breakthrough Innovations: from Generating to Implementing.”

We all want to be innovators, to introduce a product that revolutionizes an industry. But history shows that product pioneers often get left in the dust.

Remember the Palm Pilot from 1997? The PJB-100 from 1998? Apple killed and improved both products. Just like Facebook killed Friendster and World of Warcraft now overshadows EverQuest.

Some of these paved the way for better products. Others, like the 1898 Lohner-Porsche Mixte-Hybrid, were just way ahead of their time.

Summer is here again, which heralds the return of white pants, barbecues, and that curious tradition known as summer Fridays. Facing the reality that people are going to leave early anyway, many offices close for Friday PMs.

It seems like a great way to savor the relaxed pace of summer. You daydream all year about the leisurely joys you’d pursue if you only had an extra 15 minutes in your days. Practice the flute again! Cook real meals. Exercise. Take long bike rides.

But here’s the funny thing. When summer Fridays roll around, and those extra few hours appear, people have a tendency not to do any of those things they’d claim they’d do.

The Freestyle, a vending machine offering up to 125 different drinks, is expected to transform the business. Why? Because of its ability to gather vast amounts of customer data each day.

Coke was aware that the US consumer wanted a lot more variety from Coke’s dispensers than it was providing. What the company didn’t foresee was exactly how much variety was being demanded.

The National Institutes of Health today announced an agreement with two non-profit organizations to accelerate the development of potential clinical therapies for rare blood cancers.

The cooperative research and development agreement, called The Learning Collaborative (TLC), has been established as a shared commitment to move therapies for rare blood cancers into clinical proof-of-concept studies so that promising treatments can eventually be commercialized. The agreement is among the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the NIH Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases program, and the Hematology Branch within the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

LINCOLN — Gov. Dave Heineman joined a half-dozen state lawmakers Tuesday to praise a package of bills designed to improve the state’s economic climate for entrepreneurs, inventors and small businesses.

Heineman said passage of his four initiatives, along with one sponsored by Lincoln Sen. Danielle Conrad, gives the state “one of the strongest public policy strategies” in the country to attract and grow technology-focused companies.

“It puts a laser-like focus on growing Nebraska’s innovation economy,” he said during a bill-signing ceremony.

Conrad, who chaired a study last year of how to better support entrepreneurship, said Nebraska has made a “paradigm shift” in its economic development efforts by now targeting innovators and small businesses, not just large corporations.

“This is about jobs, and this is the No. 1 issue Nebraskans want us to focus on,” she said.