We pushed out the first Globe 100 in 1989 — and held our breath.
The Globe 100 has since grown into an institution, but then it was a leap of faith. I was the business editor for that first Globe 100 - and the four that followed - and sections like these were untested in those days. Much of the mountains of corporate data was compiled by an outside contractor, and while we did our due diligence, there was still a certain element of pushing it out there and hoping for the best. Visions of errors danced in my head.
All of life's experiments should turn out so well. What we got in year one, 1989, was an instant hit. But the Globe 100 has proven to be much more than a one-year wonder. Taken over two decades, the Globe 100 has become nothing less than a tableau of the Massachusetts business landscape - its ups and downs and its remarkable ability to reinvent itself.
Start with the very first paragraph of that very first Globe 100: "Say 'leading Massachusetts companies' and what do you think of?" Globe reporter Charles Stein wrote at the time. "High-technology firms such as Digital Equipment? Financial giants such as the Bank of Boston? Defense contractors such as Raytheon?"
Raytheon is a rare signature company that has managed to stay independent and grow through an age of consolidation. Far more typical were Digital and Bank of Boston, two of many big home-grown companies swallowed up by bigger, more successful competitors. The Boston Globe, now owned by The New York Times Co., was among them, of course.
The primary lesson of the Globe 100 over two decades is that change is the great constant in the Massachusetts economy. Reinvention has long been the genius of our economy: In just the lifespan of the Globe 100 we have seen industries such as defense and minicomputers wither away to be replaced by finance, software, and biotechnology.
Those transitions were accompanied by real pain in the state's bust-and-boom economy. The good times were rolling at the dawn of the Globe 100 but soon collapsed into what the nation called a recession - what we in New England could be forgiven for confusing with a depression. Ten years later, the economy was booming again, housing prices were soaring, and the state was trying to figure out how to spend the budget surplus. Now we're again facing a storm of uncertain force and duration.
The Globe 100 has provided a road map for the journey. Of the 10 companies with the largest revenue 20 years ago, only two - Raytheon and TJX - remain independent.
Two years ago, the Globe 100 introduced "the National 25" ranking to reflect the growing influence of the national and global players that have come to dominate the scene here as everywhere else. We're glad to have them here. But it was more fun when larger-than-life locals like Ken Olsen, Walter Connolly, and Ira Stepanian were calling the shots.
Steve Bailey is a former Globe business editor and columnist who now works for Bloomberg News.
