It's tough finding a silver lining in this bum economy, but here's at least one bright spot: after years of laboring in obscurity, Charlotte's entrepreneurs are finally getting some wind at their back.

Across the local business landscape these days, there's plenty of buzz and brainpower being devoted to the plight of our small businesses: whether it's incubators, venture capital or angel funds, or networking events for mom-and-pop, Main Street types.

Ever heard of the Przirembel Prize? Probably not.

That's a new innovation business award named after Clemson researcher Chris Przirembel and aimed at high-impact collaborative ventures in the Southeast. While Raleigh's Research Triangle tends to attract such opportunity, last month a team of Przirembel reps spent a day scouring Charlotte's small-business community for nominations, due by Feb. 28. (See www.przirembelprize.com.)

What about this other incubator, The Center for Entrepreneurship?

That's the name (for now, at least) of a new small-business incubator to be launched later this year by RED F Marketing and its sister companies. Once RED F, currently located in SouthPark, moves to its new 90,000-square-foot headquarters on South Church Street, it'll also start recruiting early-stage companies to work in the space.

And, of course, there's ongoing chatter behind closed doors among the city's leaders about duplicating Bull Durham Forward, the social innovation incubator credited with, among other things, spawning a creative cluster in downtown Durham that includes a mobile phone content company, a community development leader and software company.

So, what gives?

Are we just singing from the same hymnbook as the Obama administration, which last month launched with fanfare "Startup America Partnership," a public-private initiative aimed at spurring U.S. entrepreneurship?

Or is Banktown coming to embrace the reality that our economic future hinges on more than attracting large corporations; that at some point, as the Charlotte Chamber and the Charlotte Regional Partnership go big-game hunting, we'll need to roll up our own sleeves and identify and support what could be the next Google or Microsoft?

I'm hoping it's more the latter, but figure the explanation falls somewhere in between.

Terry Cox, president of the Charlotte-based small-business advocacy group, Business Innovation and Growth (aka BIG), puts it this way: "The job market is what it is. There are just not a lot of corporate jobs being created. People are starting to understand that if we're going to have new jobs, we are going to have to start creating the jobs ourselves."

Even the Ben Craig Center, the 24-year-old stalwart business incubator and partner with UNC Charlotte, is in the process of changing its name, broadening its mission and helping distressed areas around town launch their own business incubators.

Says Paul Wetenhall, president of the Ben Craig Center: "These communities have all this empty real estate and high unemployment and are asking `What can we do to improve things?'"

At least now we have an answer. We can thank the recession for giving it.