Here's one for the (as yet unwritten) business history books

by Paul Furiga

When I was editor of the Pittsburgh Business Times, I learned a great deal about storytelling. Every company has at least one great story to tell: its own.

Telling a company's great story well is a major reason I got into public relations — but that's another story for another time. I know this is an old world, but believe it or not, there are still plenty of untold stories worthy of a book.

Here's a good one: Name the Pittsburgh corporation responsible for showing us that men had made it to the moon, that elections could be reported live and that electricity could come from something other than coal (or lightning). Oh yes, it's the company that made Jack Welch a success — and it's not GE.

If you said Westinghouse, go to the head of the class. Yet how many of you know that Westinghouse Electric Co. is the one company that George Westinghouse founded but really had the least control over?

What is it about Westinghouse Electric that made it an innovator and industrial force decades after greedy bankers pried it from its founder's hands in 1909? And how did this one company come to have such a disproportionate impact on one community (Pittsburgh) that even after its "death," its castoff children continue to generate billions in annual sales and employ tens of thousands? I guess you'll have to read my book.

Or perhaps you may wish to contribute to it. You can do so by contacting me. To see the Pittsburgh Business Times column that outlines my case for the book, surf yourself over to
http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/1997/11/24/editorial2.htm