For years, policy wonks, academics and politicians have bemoaned Canada's lacklustre record on innovation.

Although this country has traditionally parlayed its rich resource base and proximity to the U.S. into one of the world's leading economies, that game will end, the economic soothsayers warn.

Brains, not brawn, will dictate tomorrow's economic winners, we're told. And in this race, the Great White North is quickly losing its competitive edge. Surveys routinely list such countries as Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands ahead of Canada on the innovation scale.

I was surfing the Web this weekend and stumbled across XKCD’s updated Map of Online Communities (here’s the TechCrunch writeup). The map takes real numbers and attempts to map out where Web users are hanging out online. The premise behind the map is that we no longer live in actual communities; instead, we call digital communities our home. As a small business owner and someone who spends a fair amount of time online, that concept really hit home with me.

Yesterday we heard that 69 percent of consumers are more likely to buy from a local business if there’s information available about that business on a social network. We’re hearing more and more that users are turning to social networks for recommendations and information. Small business owners need to know which communities and networks their audience relies on. Having this information helps us find “influencers” so that we can connect with them, leverage them and create content specifically for them.

Yesterday my partner Brad told me that he thinks something special is going on in two cities, San Franscisco and New York. That something special is a creative culture that is leading to an explosion of new web services.

This post from Om Malik bears that observation out. Here is the money quote:

San Francisco saw 36 Internet deals that brought in $131 million, while New York City saw 31 Internet deals garner $126 million. In comparison, Mountain View, San Mateo & Palo Alto saw 21 deals focused on the Internet and they brought in a total of $174 million.

For millions of consumers, the sight or smell of Campbell's soup triggers nostalgic associations with comfort, warmth, family, and childhood. But when the 140-year-old company, based in Camden, New Jersey, was refining its designs for its online community, Campbell's Kitchen, brand managers concluded that traditional surveys and focus groups that tell them such things weren't providing the insights they needed.

There seemed to be an ingredient missing. So the soup giant turned to the emerging field of netnography to see if it could provide tools for understanding how the Internet was transforming the day-to-day habits and choices of their customers. "We used to be really relevant with consumers around meal planning, and we became less so over time," says Ciara O'Connell, manager of consumer insights. "We needed to know a lot more about online consumer behavior."

Animism, Frankenstein and the Biblical injunction against creating life led to the dawn of robotic warfare

The affection of a certain island nation for all things robotic -- from hundred foot tall warfighting mecha to infantile therapy robots -- is well known. It contrasts sharply with the equally entrenched Western fear of automatons, beginning with the very invention of the term "robot," which was coined in a Czech play that debuted in 1921 in which, naturally, the robots eventually rise up and kill their human masters.

How could two cultures come to such fundamentally divergent conclusions about the status and future of the semi-autonomous helpmates whose increasing presence in our lives seems pre-ordained by nearly every sci-fi vision of the future?

FORTUNE -- Before the credit crunch, it was easy for companies to borrow just about any amount of money anytime they wanted. As you'll hear from grocery store operator Scott Nash below, entrepreneurs often would apply for larger credit lines to expand their businesses, and they got drunk on easy credit. Who needed good money-management habits when your banker would pony up on command? You know how that story ended. Bankers turned off the spigot, and small-business owners had to find other ways to raise cash. But it's not as hard as you think to find new sources of capital. Here are five strategies that actually work.

WASHINGTON — October 13, 2010 — A majority of Americans (58%) said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports increased federal spending on job creation, in a national poll commissioned by Research!America. In addition, support for expanded federal health research funding fared well among issues that would make Americans more likely to vote for a candidate.

Fully 91% of Americans think research and development (R&D) is important to their state’s economy, and 71% said investing in health research is important for job creation and economic recovery. Data compiled by Research!America, available at http://www.researchamerica.org/economic_impact, backs up this view, indicating a strong relationship between research funding and economic activity.

The poll is available here: http://www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org/where_america.php.

For years solar companies have wanted to make lightweight, flexible panels that are cheap to ship and easy to install (by unrolling them over large areas). But they've been held up by a lack of good and affordable glass substitutes.

Now 3M thinks it's found a solution. This week the company unveiled a plastic film that it says can rival glass in its ability to protect the active materials in solar cells from the elements and save money for manufacturers and their customers.

The protective film is a multilayer, fluoropolymer-based sheet that can replace glass as the protective front cover of solar panels, says Derek DeScioli, business development manager for 3M's renewable energy division. Manufacturers laminate the sheets onto the solar panels to seal them tight and shield them from moisture and other weather elements that can be deadly to the solar cells inside.

One of my mentors in the VC business used to say "the success of an investment is in inverse proportion to the number of VCs on the board."

I love that line and use it often. One or two VCs on your board is OK. Four or five is a disaster.

But beyond the board, what about the syndicate? I've seen some recent financings where there were six or more VCs firms in the syndicate. And that doesn't include the angels.

It’s time to ask that important question, ‘So, do we have a deal.’

But instead, your stomach starts to stir with anxiety, your hands get sweaty, you begin to question your sense of self-worth (or lack thereof) and, before you know it, not only have you failed to close the sale, you’ve inadvertently demonstrated your lack of belief in the offer (through your hesitation) and started to actually talk down the product in some misguided attempt to demonstrate that you are, indeed, not a salesperson!

For most business professionals, ‘selling’ is a dirty word. You probably have felt the same way at one time or another. But this type of attitude and entrepreneurship just don’t mix. So how do you reverse this negatively charged emotion? The answer is simple.

I’m often asked, ‘What’s the most important piece of advice you can give new business owners?’ I could say that the most important lesson in business is to never stop learning. And I’d be telling the truth.

However, these otherwise sage words are not particularly practical. And they are about as satisfying to most entrepreneurial minds as a McDonald’s cheeseburger is to a Sumo Wrestler’s appetite.

After much thought, factoring in seven years of interviews and coffee meetings with hundreds of entrepreneurs, from single person operations to international masters of the game, such as Bill Gates and James Dyson, and having built my own business over this time, there is one piece of advice that trumps all others.

Harvard Business School is undoubtedly the best business school in the nation. 

Do you have what it takes to get accepted?

In an interview with PoetsAndQuants.com, Deirdre Leopold, Harvard Business School's managing director of MBA admissions and financial aid, says just how competitive the process is. The 910 member class of 2010 was chosen from 9,524 applicants, a 5% application increase from last year.

The media business is so chaotic that a smart move today becomes the monkey on a CEOs’ back tomorrow—look at MySpace! Peter Lauria rates 10 CEOs navigating these choppy waters.

FREMONT, Calif. — A few years ago, Silicon Valley start-ups like Solyndra, Nanosolar and MiaSolé dreamed of transforming the economics of solar power by reinventing the technology used to make solar panels and deeply cutting the cost of production.

Founded by veterans of the Valley’s chip and hard-drive industries, these companies attracted billions of dollars in venture capital investment on the hope that their advanced “thin film” technology would make them the Intels and Apples of the global solar industry.

But as the companies finally begin mass production — Solyndra just flipped the switch on a $733 million factory here last month — they are finding that the economics of the industry have already been transformed, by the Chinese. Chinese manufacturers, heavily subsidized by their own government and relying on vast economies of scale, have helped send the price of conventional solar panels plunging and grabbed market share far more quickly than anyone anticipated.