As of May 2009, the number of unemployed people in the U.S. had surpassed 14 million, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Since the recession began a year and a half ago, the number of unemployed has increased by 7 million. Businesses across the country are cutting back or closing. There are more people looking for jobs than there are jobs to be had.

That doesn't mean, however, that the unemployed are just out of luck until the economy comes around. The entrepreneurial among them just may try their hands at business on their own. Some may strike out independently, but as writer and IT consultant Mitch Paioff says, "There are a number of brilliant people out there that are good at what they do, but a lot of those folks don't know how to handle the business aspects of starting a business."

For those folks, whom Paioff calls "business averse," participating in a business incubator may be an option. Often closely aligned with universities, incubators provide entrepreneurs with labs and/or office space when necessary. More importantly, however, they also provide business services like strategic planning, marketing, fundraising help and even IT infrastructure and support, so that the entrepreneurs can focus on what they do best -- bringing their ideas to fruition.

When it became apparent about a year ago that Doug Willett's family newspaper business would need to scale back to stay afloat, he stepped out to start his own company. Luna Tech Designs, a GeoWeb solution provider, is part of the incubator program at the Central Michigan University Research Corp.

The CMU-RC is helping the company develop a business plan to take its offerings to market and then to be able to scale it out quickly. It's not something he would have been able to do on his own, Willett says. "[The university] is helping us do a market analysis, helping us do a competitor analysis. All the legwork that I would not be able to do because I'm doing work for paying customers to pay my bills, they're providing those resources."

Willett, a 1990 CMU graduate, had heard about the incubator program from a friend and was able to secure a meeting after a few phone calls. Roughly 30 minutes after presenting Luna Tech and its ideas to the committee, he says, "we were signing papers" to participate in the program.

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