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Sunday, April 28, 2002

By Douglas Heuck , Post-Gazette Business Editor

Today we rank Pittsburgh's Top 50 business leaders based on two criteria -- leadership and community involvement.

	The Top 50: No. 1 Rounding out the Top 10 The leaders of 2001 The Top 50 businesses in Pittsburgh

The most significant of the two, for our purposes, is business leadership. And when times are difficult, leadership is needed and appreciated more than ever. But how do you measure leadership? In business, there are always the revenue and profit numbers. And we looked at those.

But there are other standards too. Innovation is one. Dealing with adversity is another. One more is the kind of work environment the leader has crafted.

Though business leadership is the main gauge, we also considered community involvement.

There was one additional element -- timeliness. What did the person do in 2001?

Armed with the criteria, our knowledge and nominations from the community and ourselves, the business staff sat down to hash it out over four meetings.

As with last year, we excluded government leaders and members of the news media. Government leaders have a big impact on business, but including them made a difficult task murkier still. We cut out the news media, lest our judgment and motives be impure. Unlike last year, however, we opened the competition to people who don't live in Pittsburgh. After a debate, the consensus was that requiring residency has a parochial air we'd like to avoid. And that gave the list a different hue. For instance, three Ohioans making a big impact on Pittsburgh made the list, including this year's winner, Frank Kass.

The Top 10 has changed almost entirely from last year. Only Glen Meakem and Mark Nordenberg repeat. In all, there are 36 new faces on this year's list.

Finally, why do we do it? What is the purpose of spending the time and ink going through such an exercise? There's no doubt that it's a good exercise for our staff of writers and editors. The main reason, however, is because we believe it's a good idea to take a day to sit back, read and recognize the extraordinary breadth and depth of endeavor and accomplishment that is happening each year in Pittsburgh.