A guiding hand, according to a survey conducted late last year by the National Business Incubation Assn. Business incubators are primarily nonprofit groups that provide professional advice and business planning services to startups in economically disadvantaged areas. The Athens (Ohio) trade group surveyed 587 incubator organizations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. It found that incubators helped to create 245,200 new jobs and 20,000 new companies in North America since 1980.

Considering the millions of new jobs and businesses that have been added to the U.S. economy in the 1990s alone, those numbers seem anemic. But Sally Hayhow, director of publications for the trade group, says incubators absolutely help entrepreneurs stay in business: "The greatest contributions that business incubation is making is to create a framework and a structure that is there to help a business grow -- and it increases the success rate of companies." Previous studies, she adds, show that entrepreneurs who work with incubation organizations have an 87% success rate, compared with a 70% success rate for small business as a whole. It's quality, not quantity, she argues.

By Jeremy Quittner in New York
jeremy_quittner@businessweek.com