Microsoft has teamed up with a Toronto-based angel fund company to create Canada’s first entrepreneurship-based innovation center. The company, Infusion Angels, states its goal is to identify, fund, and help grow concepts into full fledged, revenue-oriented companies, and the creation of the Infusion Angels Innovation Centre should go a long way in helping reach that goal repeatedly. An excerpt from an article on IT Business about the announcement:

The country’s first entrepreneurship-based innovation centre will be a learning and experimenting space for IT up-and-comers who want to develop their ideas, skills, and business savvy — free of charge.

Mark Relph, vice president of developer and platform evangelism for Microsoft Canada, added:

When it comes to building these IT empires, said Relph, Canada is somewhat behind. “Canada’s known for a few strong companies, but compared to Silicon Valley or Israel now, where there is an explosion of community and a culture of risk-taking and innovation, we’re doing fairly well, but we can do better than we are today.” He sees that there has been a move in the right direction, what with the government’s interest in the country’s “agility and productivity.”

This comes on the same day that an article was posted on IT Business stating that Toronto is one of the IT hotbeds in all of North America, placing third behind San Francisco and New York.

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