Creative business ideas bubble up from underground every day. Making one take flight is a lot more complicated.

It takes vision, yes, but it also takes capital. It takes marketing muscle, for sure, but also proof that the idea works.

At a time when the nation’s — and the region’s — economies are lurching with uncertainty into the 21st century and when every state is searching for the magic formula to midwife new industries, St. Louis took an important step forward this week.

The occasion: opening of the new BioGenerator Accelerator Labs. They provide space, available for little or no cost, where potential entrepreneurs can work to perfect their products before seeking out venture capital.

Our region already is a respected hub of research in biomedical and plant science. To translate that work into commercial success for the region, St. Louis and St. Louis County have opened business incubators.

Those are places where early-stage businesses can rent space and get help with the administrative support they need to get off the ground.

The new BioGenerator Accelerator Labs are different because they focus on the earliest stages of business development, when aspiring entrepreneurs still are working to prove and perfect their potential blockbuster products.

Post-Dispatch reporter Georgina Gustin told the story this week of a group of former Pfizer Inc. employees, displaced when the giant drug company downsized its research facility in the St. Louis area. Rather than pursuing opportunities elsewhere, the former Pfizer workers created Confluence Life Sciences right here in St. Louis.

A few years ago, the partners would have had to look elsewhere for the laboratory space they needed — maybe even elsewhere in the country. The cost of renting lab and office space is prohibitive to most potential startups.

But this week, Confluence Life Sciences became the first official tenant at the BioGenerator Accelerator Labs. It gained access to two biology and two chemistry labs, a large laboratory it will share with other tenants and private office space, crucial to fledgling companies whose main assets may be intellectual property.

It’s unlikely that many of the companies that get their start in the labs will someday grow into another Monsanto or Cisco Systems or even Pfizer Inc.

The idea is to “increase the number of shots on goal,” explained Donn Rubin, executive director of the Coalition For Plant and Life Sciences, a group of research institutions, nonprofits and corporations spearheading local efforts to translate research breakthroughs into commercial success.

The more shots local entrepreneurs take, the greater the odds that one of them will light the lamp. That would create jobs and lay the groundwork for other successes.

Mr. Rubin said the new lab, as well as other business incubators, will create a “continuum of infrastructure” to assist local startups.

Money to pay for the new lab came from local foundations and the state government through a special life sciences fund created with money from the multi-state tobacco settlement.

The new lab is a step in the right direction for the St. Louis region, as was the BioGenerator itself, a non-profit formed in 2003 to spur commercialization of local research discoveries.

The road to innovation and success is a long one, but St. Louis is headed in the right direction.