eslie Duke knew he had a good product to sell. But he also knew it would take patience and persistence to market the innovation. It was a product unlikely to start flying off store shelves by itself.

Tickle Me Elmo it wasn’t.

“We are in a very niche market,” says Duke, president of Ballistics Research, which had figured out a groundbreaking way to do ballistics testing on firearms without doing damage to the bullets.

What Ballistics Research needed to crack that niche market was a little luck and some low overhead. Luck would have to take care of itself, but Duke found the low-cost office space he needed at the Business Expansion Center (BEC), run by Coosa Valley Technical College in Rome. And shortly after he located his startup at BEC last summer, members of Congress, U.S.Army firearms experts and law enforcement officials from around the country were paying call to this North Georgia city for a demonstration.

Today, Duke acknowledges that Coosa Valley Tech’s BEC was essential to getting his company off the ground.

“It really helps on numerous fronts,” he says. “Cash outlay when you’re just getting started is very important, and they give you space to grow your business at a very reasonable rate. The financial benefits, the networking benefits — there are just so many things they do for us as far as getting the word out about our products.”

The BEC, along with the Augusta-Richmond County Small Business Incubator (SBI), operated by Augusta Technical College, are two of a number of business incubators being developed at Georgia’s technical colleges. Living up to the image conjured by the word “incubator” as a warm, encouraging place to support the early growth of young businesses, these incubators are intended to foster regional economic development by giving critical, early support to entrepreneurs and small businesses through managerial and technical assistance, low office rental rates and shared access to basic office services and equipment.

But the businesses that join the incubators get more than just a break on rent. In addition to hosting seminars and market capital meetings, both Rome’s BEC and Augusta’s SBI maintain advisory boards heavily stocked with business professionals who serve as mentors. Each incubator requires regular meetings between advisory board members and clients in order to review business plans and bookkeeping and otherwise promote their tenants’ ongoing progress.