A Christmas miracle
Pittsburgh's FedEx Ground prepares to deliver to millions during 'peak'John Dionise knows Santa would be jealous. Rather than flying a sleigh all over the place this Christmas season, trying by sight to find each and every home where a gift is to be delivered, the drivers who work for Dionise out of a Sewickley station for FedEx Ground—the growing, Moon Township-based division of FedEx Corporation—have one huge advantage Santa never did: an advanced GPS system. more >
Pittsburgh Today & Tomorrow 2012
DEMOGRAPHICS: The exodus is over—more people are moving here than leavingA few years ago, a model that University of Pittsburgh researchers use to help them assess local demographic trends suggested the day was coming. Last year brought further evidence that it, in fact, has arrived: southwestern Pennsylvania has finally turned the corner to become a place where more people arrive than leave.
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Labor management
Trumka and DeIuliis compare notes on jobs, energy and the environmentWinter 2012
Against a backdrop of high national unemployment and concern about U.S. dependence on foreign energy, Richard Trumka, former president of the United Mine Workers and current president of the AFL-CIO, and Nicholas DeIuliis, president of Consol Energy, met in the second of a series of labor-management discussions sponsored by the Community College of Allegheny County. more >
Blockbuster!
How PNC secretly acquired the parcels for its new downtown headquartersSean D. HamillWinter 2012There were no hidden tape recorders, car chases or safe houses involved, but you can almost hear the theme music from “Mission Impossible” when Gary Saulson, PNC’s director of corporate real estate, describes the steps he took to veil PNC’s purchase of almost a block of downtown Pittsburgh. more >
Uncharted territory
As the co-founders of Google and Apple Computer looked on, Carnegie Mellon University robotic vehicles made their mark in a driver-less race across the Nevada desertJames MorrisWinter 2006
Science and technology march along, year after year, making gradual progress in transforming our lives. Every now and again, however, a public event is staged—the moon landing, a computer playing a chess champion, decoding the human genome—that gives the public the appearance of a breakthrough. more >
Masters of their fate
How PNC became the fifth largest U.S. bank during the economy's darkest daysDawn was still hours away when Jim Rohr emerged from National City Corp. headquarters in downtown Cleveland on Oct. 24, 2008. The streets were empty, but familiar. His grandfather’s deli had stood just across the street. more >
The forecast
U.S. and Pittsburgh to grow Winter 2006 For 2006, the U.S. economy’s prospects remain favorable, along with those of Asia, North America and, to a lesser extent, Europe. One key assumption underlying our sanguine global economic outlook is that crude oil prices will fluctuate within a $45 to $70 per barrel range, more >
Six CEOs
Local executives describe corporate life in a post-Enron economySummer 2008Enron’s spectacular collapse in 2001, followed by WorldCom’s demise after Bernie Ebbers enjoyed more than $400 million in loans approved by his board of directors, led to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). SOX was intended to change the behavior andaccountability of publicly traded companies, CEOs, boards of directors and public accounting firms.
more >A book thing
Independent bookstores show how they compete against the chain-store behemothsFall 2007Ten or 15 years ago, a story about Pittsburgh's “independent” bookstores wouldn't have made much sense. “When we opened in 1990, there was just the Borders in South Hills,” says Richard Goldman, co-owner of Mystery Lovers' Bookshop. more >
Steel City vs. Silicon Valley
Valley guy: Winter '07Winter 2007In 1890, when my great-grandfather returned from San Francisco to take over the family farm on Shady Side's Ellsworth Avenue, the value of Allegheny County real estate ranked sixth in the country. With its river connections, access to coal and access to Wall Street, Pittsburgh was becoming America's most vital manufacturing center. Entrepreneurs such as Andrew Carnegie were accumulating great wealth; the Mellons were the venture capitalists of the day. more >
Google knows how to flirt
Valley guy: Fall '06
You hate to wait through an advertisement on television. But you enjoy the look and feel of an ad in your favorite magazine. You hate pop-ups on the Internet. Yet you like finding what you need on Google. Our likes, dislikes and habits in this changing world are becoming critically important to companies that want to understand the latest revolution in the ancient industry known as advertising.
more >Springsteen Inc.
Business lessons from The Boss
It was Christmas 1978, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were playing at Pittsburgh's Stanley Theater. A mutual friend asked my wife to relay a message to sax player “Big Man” Clarence Clemons and ask him to call her. We had a notion of who Bruce was but had never heard of Clarence.
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