Last week I wrote about a tantalizing offer from the Chilean government: entrepreneurs with innovative ideas can apply to be part of Start Up Chile, a program aimed at attracting early-stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile. If chosen, participants spend six months in a sunny clime while also collecting 40K of free money to help with their venture.

Eighteen Canadians are part of the third round of the program, which first began in 2010. The 68 entrepreneurs come from 27 different countries.

For the entrepreneurs, the lure is obvious. For Chile, the idea is to foster innovation in the country, and build connections between the country and the international business community.

I closed off last week by asking if this is the type of initiative Canada should pursue? Other countries are doing just that.

According to the program’s website, Start Up Chile “has inspired spinoffs around the world such as Startup America, Britain, Greece, and Italy.”

There has certainly been enough gnashing of teeth over Canada’s lack of innovation. Penicillin, basketball and the telephone are all fairly ancient breakthroughs, and our more recent international success, RIM’s BlackBerry, has lost a bit of its luster, to say the least.

The challenges are many, according to the various groups that have studied the problem. Back in October we heard from the expert panel commissioned by the Minister of State for Science and Technology, and led by Open Text CEO Tom Jenkins. After a year of hearings and reviews, the panel reported that getting funding is a nightmare.

Victoria Lennox hopes the program will bring the start-up community. (Victoria Lennox)

The federal government’s R&D programs are “unnecessarily complicated”, and the group recommends that a ‘concierge’ type of body be established, to help entrepreneurs find their way through the maze of applications and accreditations.

Corporate research and development spending in Canada has been declining for over a decade. As for venture capital, the Business Development Bank of Canada released a report last year concluding the Canadian system is “broken.” Others lament our weak intellectual property regime.

But fear not, innovative entrepreneurs! Start Up Canada is coming to the rescue!

It turns out that a new program is launching in March. The press materials won’t go out until February, so I’m jumping the gun a bit here. But I did get the incoming executive director on the phone, and discovered quite a bit about the new program.

There are some big differences from the Start Up Chile program: sadly the Canadian version won’t be handing out $40,000 to anyone, but happily it’s focusing on Canadian, home-grown entrepreneurs and will be funded privately — not with taxpayers’ dollars.

“It’s going to be the centerpiece of Canada’s innovation community,” says director Victoria Lennox.

Lennox is a story in herself. Just 28, Lennox is one of the youngest ever to win the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion. She visited Buckingham Palace last summer to pick up the prize from the Queen herself. It was recognition for work Lennox did while studying at Oxford, establishing a network for student entrepreneurship that grew amazingly quickly. More than 45,000 members signed up in 80 universities within a year.

Originally from Cambridge, Ont., Lennox moved back to Canada in 2010 to take a job with Industry Canada, working on entrepreneurship policy. But she was distracted away from that by some colleagues in the UK who were involved with Start Up Britain. They connected Lennox to the Kauffman Foundation, a key investor in Start Up US. It wasn’t long before she decided it was time for Canada to get in on the Start Up movement.

“We have a very fragmented entrepreneurial eco-system in Canada,” she explains. “There are a lot of organizations in this space that support entrepreneurs, but they tend to be regionally focused, or focused on a particular industry. It’s difficult for entrepreneurs to know where to go. Start Up Canada is going to bring the entire start up community to one place.”

She’s establishing links with universities, research parks, angel investors, the Canadian Venture Capital Association, and the Canadian Innovation Centre. There are 200 partners in all.

“Canada is very entrepreneurial, we’re on top of this stuff,” says Lennox, noting that a national tour starts in Halifax in March. “Over next 6 months we’ll be engaging over 250,000 Canadians in entrepreneurship.”

Lennox was rewarded as the youngest ever to win the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion for her entrepreneurial work. (Victoria Lennox)

But the budget for Start Up Canada is almost non-existent. Lennox has been working without pay since April. Her salary kicks in when the program starts in March, and she’s joined by six team members.

The website (not quite live yet) has been donated, so have the posters. Partners are providing space and resources. “Everybody is lending capacity,” is how Lennox puts it. “It’s quite nice.”

Is “nice” going to cut it? As Lennox herself points out, Canada’s start-up culture is scattered and disorganized to a large extent. Surely it’s going to take serious man/womanpower to get it together.

Lennox is undaunted, noting that her group has some very wealthy donors behind it. And her key contacts are at “accelerators”, organizations that are similar to incubators, helping entrepreneurs develop their ventures, but different in the sense they are attached to groups that have real money for start-ups.

“There’s Growlab in Vancouver, it’s a brilliant program. Montreal has Founder Fuel, it’s funded by Real Ventures, a VC firm, and in Toronto there’s Extreme Venture Partners.”

Lennox has certainly accomplished a lot in her relatively short time in the business world. She’s taking on a big role with Start Up Canada, and innovators everywhere will be hoping her own start up is a success.