OUR ANNUAL GUIDE TO THE STATE OF INNOVATION IN OUR ECONOMY, FEATURING THE BUSINESSES WHOSE INNOVATIONS ARE HAVING THE GREATEST IMPACTS ACROSS THEIR INDUSTRIES AND OUR CULTURE AS A WHOLE.

It isn’t always the easiest of tasks to find a silver lining in desperate situations. For one, you need to be willing to both dig deep while simultaneously believe it to be there. The general notion is that the silver lining of a downtrodden economy is the birth of entrepreneurs. When Kipp sat down with Shadi Banna, founder of Potential.com and an all-round entrepreneurship enthusiast, he said that recession is a time when people have less to lose (with job cuts and reduced salary packages) and so are more tempted to take matters into their own hands. Why does he love entrepreneurs so much? They offer solutions to a lot of the world’s problems. Oh, and they’re usually an extremely energetic folk and who wouldn’t want to be exposed to that kind of energy?

Almost every startup is a virtual team these days, since most don’t start out with dedicated office space, and some or all members of the team work part-time or out of their own home. It’s a small world, so these team members may not even be in the same town, or the same country. Outsourcing is just another extension of the virtual team concept to people you don’t even know.

Working effectively with a virtual team of any sort has many challenges. How do entrepreneurs establish and maintain rapport with people they rarely see, and team members who have never met? How do they keep track of what everyone is doing and assure effective communication between all team members?

Guy Kawasaki is an author, speaker and tech evangelist. His latest book, Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur: How to Publish a Book (APE), co-written by Shawn Welch, is a detailed guide to self-publishing.

Below is an exclusive interview I conducted with him via email:

Question: How do you like to be introduced since you’re a man with many hats?

Kawasaki: My self-identity is a father and husband. As a father and husband, one of my roles is a provider. My speaking, writing, advising, and investing are all means to an end–that of adequately providing for my family.

As I recently wrote in Taking Control of Your Online Reputation Part I: Internal Steps, there are many ways for businesses to proactively bolster their online reputations. Doing great work, using social media effectively, creating meaningful content and reaching out to the media can all serve to build a rock-solid online reputation.

Unfortunately, no matter how well you build your reputation, there are going to be people who will try to tear you down. They could be disgruntled former employees, dissatisfied customers, online reviewers and bloggers or even your competitors.

When you are pitching to a venture capitalist or angel investor, it’s like venturing into a dragon’s lair and attempting to convince the fire-breathing monster to give you one of its golden eggs. It’s a no-nonsense matter and one bad move could end your entrepreneurial ambitions.

Startups often think that once they have an idea, chances are it is rock star worthy and any self-respecting VC will be bonkers not to fork over piles of money to back their venture. Not so. Yes, some people get lucky, most need to work really hard at it.

When you approach the dragons of finance (the investors) and ask them to pour copious amounts of cash into your business, you don’t want to mess around. After chatting to a few VCs and attending, as well as judging, various startup competitions, it has become clear that there are things you just don’t do.

In a presentation to reporters yesterday at a golf resort on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road, Samsung president Young Sohn announced that his company plans to invest $100 million in research projects and businesses aiming to solve important technology problems. Seeking to demystify its sprawling business, Sohn said the South Korean company’s latest investing activities would be centered at a new “Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center” just across the street, near Stanford University.

There’s no doubt that U.S. consumers are taking more notice of Samsung, which, according to Strategy Analytics, an independent analyst company, shipped 30 percent of the smartphones sold around the world last year. But the company has sometimes suffered from the perception that it follows technology trends rather than leading the way with important innovations.

Subra Suresh, director of the National Science Foundation since late 2010, will leave the federal science agency in March and become president of Carnegie Mellon University in July, the NSF and the university announced on Tuesday.

Mr. Suresh, who was dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before taking office at the NSF in October 2010, said he was leaving the agency with a record of accomplishments that include promoting international collaborations and expanding interdisciplinary research.

Last week, when Matt Yglesias wrote that DC makes it far too hard to open up a business, a bunch of conservatives apparently had a field day.  "Even the liberal Matt Yglesias . . . " they said, without, apparently, being aware that Matt Yglesias has been criticizing local regulatory burdens for quite some time.  

Yesterday, Matt responded:  

This is something I think I actually understand very well. I voted for Republican Patrick Mara the last time he was on the ballot for a D.C. Council at-large seat, and I'll probably vote for him again. I voted for Mitt Romney for governor in 2002. I would have voted for Michael Bloomberg in the 2005 or 2009 New York City mayoral races, and in general I think the conservative critique of municipal government in the United States has a lot of merit. Republicans might be interested in why someone like me—someone who sympathizes with many of their economic policy views—still hesitates to vote for their candidates for national office. One reason is that I tend to think conservatives place much too little emphasis on the rights and interests of religious and ethnic minority groups, gay people, and the like. Another reason is that conservatives have much too much affection for state-sponsored violence. In terms of economic policy, Republicans tend to deride the hugely successful practice of taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. But even on the regulatory front, there are real shortcomings to the Republican approach.

Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to lift the cap on Wisconsin’s Angel Investment Tax program, often referred to as the Act 255 tax credit program, drew support Thursday from the Wisconsin Technology Council and its Wisconsin Angel Network program.

Along with other economic development initiatives, Walker outlined his plans Thursday to lift the cap in order to encourage continued private investment in startup companies.

Subject to legislative approval, the budget will propose removing the maximum cap – which is currently set at $47.5 million – but retains the annual limit, effectively allowing this program to continue into the future.

There will be a few obvious trends this year as well as a few surprising ones. Regardless of whether you are new to entrepreneurship or not, take heed of these advances in 2013.

1. Get Off the Trend Bandwagon

The problem is trends tend to distract an entrepreneur from what they really want to accomplish. A nearly non-trendy trend this year will be to get off the bandwagon and focus on specific ideas and techniques rather than attempting to try everything at once.

Rejection is a part of life that we have been trained to find unpleasant. But what if every rejection only meant you were one step closer to a yes? What if you considered rejection to be a crucial part of your search instead of an obstacle? What if it were merely a chapter in the much larger story of your purpose?

That’s the mind-set I had when I sold books door-to-door for Southwestern back in college. If there’s one profession where you’ll learn a lot about rejection, it’s door-to-door sales.

Here’s the part that made dealing with rejection easy: my goal was not to sell a single book. I didn’t care about the sale. All I cared about was doing thirty presentations every single day. Even if I got thirty nos, I still would have accomplished my goal.

Sometimes the hardest part of accomplishing a goal is figuring out what a step in the right direction actually looks like. Missteps are tell-tale signs that your metrics for success need a makeover.

The recent Super Bowl was an instant classic with a highly unusual next-to-last play. It was fourth and long and the Ravens needed to punt from deep in their own territory. With 11 seconds left on the clock, Ravens punter Sam Cook received the ball in his own end zone and ran around until he was forced out of bounds. By taking an intentional safety and giving the 49ers two points, the Ravens wound down the clock in order to keep the 49ers from having time to produce a game-winning touchdown.

As the popularity of Instagram continues to ensure that our current era has more photographed meals than any other in history, we still have a hunger for photography that exposes truths about the human condition and natural world. Lucky for us, there are still institutions promoting such things. Just this week, for instance, the World Photography Organization announced the shortlist for the Sony World Photography Awards.

I’m going to be honest from the get-go: I hold a legal degree, and I’ve spent a long time advising startups after they’ve already gotten themselves into a small (or big) situation. I’ve worked as both a large-firm lawyer and a boutique lawyer. And I think large law firms are great — I just don’t think they happen to be the right choice for every startup.

That said, as an entrepreneur myself, I’m also a big fan of working with service providers that want to grow with your company.

A while back I talked about how and where to find a co-founder in “For a Startup, Two Heads are Always Better Than One.” The feedback was good, but some readers asked me to be a bit more specific on attributes that might indicate an ideal startup partner. Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for.

In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.” The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO.

THINK for a moment about your typical workday. Do you wake up tired? Check your e-mail before you get out of bed? Skip breakfast or grab something on the run that’s not particularly nutritious? Rarely get away from your desk for lunch? Run from meeting to meeting with no time in between? Find it nearly impossible to keep up with the volume of e-mail you receive? Leave work later than you’d like, and still feel compelled to check e-mail in the evenings?

More and more of us find ourselves unable to juggle overwhelming demands and maintain a seemingly unsustainable pace. Paradoxically, the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less. A new and growing body of multidisciplinary research shows that strategic renewal — including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations — boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health.

Ray Felts is North American president of crowdsource patent-research company AOP.

You’re a venture capitalist. You just invested in a promising startup, e-Widgets. The future looks bright. Suddenly, out of nowhere, e-Widgets gets a certified letter in the mail. The letter claims that the company’s flagship software is infringing on an existing patent. Instead of focusing on innovation that e-Widgets can bring to market, the company suddenly gets sidetracked into a legal battle that could ultimately destroy its business.

This is not an uncommon scenario.

Patent trolls, a common term for non-practicing entities (NPEs), are shell companies that do not design, manufacture or distribute products. Rather, their sole purpose is to acquire and license patents to unsuspecting businesses. Last year, NPE litigation cost tech companies $29 billion, up more than 400 percent from 2005.

Governors throughout the United States recognize the importance of creating and implementing technology-based economic development strategies. As a result of economic growth being more tied to human capital and technology, regions, states, and countries have to distinguish themselves from their peer competitors. Indiana and others are developing ways to combat these challenges.

In 2012-2013, many states implemented or expanded initiatives to help build their economies. The leaders of these states come from different political parties, but recognize the importance of these efforts. Many of the states referenced on the list are likely to be likely suspects, while others may be more surprising to you. Please find below a list of the states I have chosen to highlight:

1. Idaho: Governor Butch Otter (Republican) signed into law legislation that creates the Idaho Global Entrepreneurial Mission. This program is an industry-university research partnership to accelerate technology transfer. The state is providing $5 Million in funding to launch the program.

As of last year, 1.3 billion people world-wide were living in areas that had no access to electricity. Approximately 780 million of those same people also lack clean water. And while those numbers have fallen since 2008, when 1.8 billion individuals were said to be living off-grid, these numbers are still huge.

Thankfully, start-ups and charities are coming up with new and ever-more-inventive ways of providing power, water, convenience and more to these under-developed parts of the globe. One of the chief factors in this uptick in off-the-grid tech has been an across-the-board price reduction in the cost of solar cells and LED lighting. In fact, in off-grid areas, the installation and maintenance of solar and other renewable energy sources is now more affordable than laying traditional cable. Could the grid itself become obsolete in the near future?