Historically, the best time to start a new company is during a recession. Rents are cheap, good employees are looking for a job, and you get a chance to have all the kinks worked out by the time the ecomomy picks up. Among Silicon Valley’s innovations are incubators, essentially providers of space, services, and advice to start-up companies. Think of incubators as one-stop shopping for entrepreneurs. In a sign that the ecomony may be turning around, a number of new and existing incubators are raising their profile here and around the country.

According to the Wall Street Journal, prominent firms in this field are Founders Institute, TechShop, TheHub, YCombinator and Plug and Play Tech Center. Some v/c firms also run incubator-like operations internally. All of them are gearing up for a busy 2010, a hopeful sign. Given the low levels of start-up activity in 2009, some sort of a rebound seems almost certain.