As jobs become more difficult to secure, many are beginning to think outside the box.

Gainesville now boasts two small-business incubators entrepreneurs can use as a resource to start their own businesses.

Carroll Turner, director of Lanier Technical College’s Manufacturing Development Center at Featherbone Communiversity, said small businesses will play a key role in economic recovery.

“With the economic situation as it is, it always creates a need for startups,” Turner said. “Entrepreneurship is what’s going to bring us out of the recession. It’s the small businesses that will lead the recovery.”

Turner said 95 percent of businesses have fewer than 100 employees and 80 percent of businesses employ less than five people.

Starting a business can be hard and many entrepreneurs encounter high expenses and other road blocks along the way.

The goal of a small business incubator is to eliminate as many difficulties as possible so businesses have a higher rate of success.

Jerry Gross recently opened the Office Suites Business Incubator, a for-profit company in which entrepreneurs can lease space and get help with their business from on site staff.

“It’s an almost instantaneous startup,” Gross said. “The risk has been reduced dramatically.”

Turner said 87 percent of businesses in the incubator at Featherbone go on to be successful.

“Most people go to the school of hard knocks, which is life experiences in business,” Turner said. “We use our expertise here to overcome some of the negative sides to having to learn on the fly.”

There are currently 13 companies in the incubator and six have “graduated.”

Turner said the nonprofit incubator at Featherbone Communiversity selects potential business applications based on the soundness of their business model, the likelihood of capital funding and their chance of surviving once they are no longer in the incubator.

“We’re a nonprofit trying to do things to create jobs in the community,” Turner said.

The companies pay a nominal rental fee for office space and stay in the incubator between two and three years.

Incubators can accommodate any type of business from manufacturing to medical supplies.

“The common thread that runs through al the different companies is a passion,” Turner said.

Gross said he thinks the economy is pushing many people to try new things and seek security through self-employment. For that reason, he thinks business incubators may soon become more popular.

 “(The economy)’s shaken up a lot of people,” Gross said. “That’s a real eye-opener.”