The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center isn't satisfied offering office and lab space to some of the hottest (and coolest) technology companies in the area. Now it's helping to launch them, too.

Today, sporting 120 tenants with more than 1,800 employees, the CRC is approaching 70 percent full, according to president Joe Meredith. To Meredith, that means it's time for Phase II.

Central to his plan for the CRC's growth is VT KnowledgeWorks, a tech-company incubator that will launch and nurture start-up companies - companies that will hopefully become paying tenants at the CRC.

Meredith has enough faith in the KnowledgeWorks concept and its director, Jim Flowers, that the CRC is constructing a $6 million, 45,000-square-foot building for the incubator (thanks in part to a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration). Scheduled to open March 1, it sits at U.S. 460 and South Main Street.

But VT KnowledgeWorks doesn't need a building yet; it's already open for business. That's because member companies - and companies-to-be - don't need office space at first.

The KnowledgeWorks program is roughly divided into two parts. The first, Flowers said, "is where we help define the business concepts, filter them, confirm that there's really a market, protect their intellectual property, assure that they have a strong strategic plan and so on." The idea is to "squeeze the risk out of the notion" and attract investors who will provide money to get started.

Flowers calls this "provisional membership," where the companies don't even have an office. KnowledgeWorks acts as a consultant, preparing the nascent company for launch by getting its legal and planning ducks in a row, seeking to attract investors and their seed money. So far, all of the eight startups involved with KnowledgeWorks are in this stage.

Getting that money is an important first step; it provides the funds to, among other things, open an office. As Flowers put it: "Seed money will permit them to say, 'Now I'm really in the program. Now I'm a full member. Now I've got space. I've got a name. I've got a phone. I'm in business'."

At that point, the company is also in the second part of the KnowledgeWorks program: full membership.

With full membership, Flowers said, KnowledgeWorks helps the company focus on its product by taking care of many of the clerical and legal concerns. "We insulate them from administrative and logistical issues. We do all that stuff for them or on their behalf," he explained. "The other thing we do is try to keep a cocoon around them ... that essentially keeps them from making a mistake they don't have to make."

There are several layers to that cocoon, starting with a volunteer adviser known as a "shadow CEO." He or she is typically someone who's headed a company before, according to Flowers, and serves as a "mentor and good buddy."

Along with the shadow CEO comes a group of personal advisers - bankers, lawyers, accountants and other successful business people who, as Flowers put it, "have been around the block."

These are people who will meet with the company once a month for a year, "drink coffee and eat doughnuts on our nickel and talk with the owner for an hour - 'What's going on? Have you thought of that?' and just let things happen," Flowers said.

Also with full membership (which might take six months or several years to reach) comes office space, offered at a discount from full CRC rates. That's what the new building will house. Once a company is in that building, it will be able to take advantage of the CRC infrastructure - everything from housekeeping, a bank, and a cafe to a copy center and broadband Internet access.

Again, the idea is to let the startup focus on the core business, not which cleaning company to hire or which copier to buy. "We're a services model just like the park is," Flowers said. "But the local nuances are always important."

CRC president Joe Meredith explained those nuances: "You've got this service offering that the CRC provides, and then KnowledgeWorks comes and puts a more detailed layer on top of that. [Its] services are ... targeted to someone who's just starting a company. So the two together are really quite a nice package."

The CRC is a for-profit subsidiary of the Virginia Tech Foundation. Meredith said the center is profitable, but he would not provide details.

Almost half of its tenants are local entrepreneurs, including Virginia Tech faculty and students.

On the Net:

www.vtknowledgeworks.com

www.vtcrc.com