If you're looking for some underlying meaning to this year's rankings of the region's 50 largest public companies, you need look no further than the name perched atop many of the categories, including the Overall and Big Companies' lists: Alcoa. The global aluminum giant in many ways symbolizes the past, present and future of Pittsburgh and the country.

	Online Graphics Top Winners Overall Big Companies

It dates to the late 1800s and early 20th century, when steel, coal, electricity, aluminum, glass, oil and railroads dominated the Western Pennsylvania economy and provided for much of the world. Some of the ventures spawned by such entrepreneurs as Westinghouse, Mellon, Frick, Carnegie and Alcoa's Hunt still employ thousands locally.

But like so many big-line manufacturers whose ranks have dwindled here, none of Alcoa's production occurs here. Instead, Pittsburgh serves as a corporate home and center for research.

Alcoa's employees for the most part are of the white-collar and lab coat crowd, and are representative of the so-called "knowledge'' economy that holds the key to the region's and country's economic future -- one in which new industries and innovative ways of doing things are created at home and shipped around the world, only to be replaced with a new wave of industries and innovation. Or so it is hoped.

To be sure, manufacturers, energy companies and financiers still play a crucial role in the region's economy -- 10 of this year's top 20 overall companies fall into these fields, and a recent study for the state found manufacturing represents 16.1 percent of the commonwealth's gross state product. Retailers, software firms, education providers, money managers and telecommunications equipment and service firms round out the remaining top 20, illustrating the ongoing shift from a goods- to service-producing economy here and elsewhere.

But many local companies that fall into manufacturing's ranks aren't so much making stuff here but directing and thinking of ways to make stuff better, quicker and smarter at far-flung facilities elsewhere. And much of the stuff that is made here, such as medical equipment, electrical components and complex metals, tends to be highly specialized and to require workers with brains, not brawn.

Even Alcoa's former and current headquarters serve to illustrate the changing nature of doing business in America.

The former, an aluminum-clad, vertical skyscraper broken down into a maze of offices inside, was representative of the vertical organization that dominated corporate America for much of the 20th century. Everything was housed under its walls, with levels of importance rising with the floors, ending at the 31st floor, home to the executives.

That world, which seemed so modern just a generation ago, has changed, perhaps no place more visibly than Pittsburgh. Vertical organizations have been flattened, with decision-making authority and a range of administrative duties, from accounting to legal to technology, outsourced to third-party firms.

Alcoa's new headquarters along the Allegheny River are a showcase for this trend, all the way up to its so-called "open office'' environment without walls that's aimed at getting employees to collaborate and share ideas.

It's worth noting that the new digs, with its box-like shape and significantly smaller size, visibly captures this flattening -- a trend that has seen the elimination of tens of thousands of Downtown corporate jobs the past 20 years as companies such as Gulf Oil, Westinghouse Electric, Rockwell International, Consolidated Natural Gas and Alcoa shrank and, in many cases, disappeared, leaving behind towering symbols of days gone by.

Of course, this year's Top 50 isn't really about the exodus of Fortune 500 headquarters and the shrinking of Big Steel and other old-line manufacturers.

It's about a truly global economy in which Pittsburgh and the rest of the country operates, whether we like it or not. Elsewhere on these pages you'll see a list of companies that play a major role here but are based elsewhere, and you'll notice that many are based overseas, in the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Japan.

You'll also see evidence in various charts throughout the section of just how dramatically mergers and acquisitions have reshaped this region's economic landscape.

You'll also notice a number of companies with funny-looking names, such as Ansys, Ansoft, II-VI and IGate Capital, that are just some of the promising and relatively young technology and telecommunications players. It's hoped by many that, in another five years if not sooner, these annual lists put together by the Post-Gazette business staff will be filled with a lot more names that prove difficult to pronounce.

But even if that happens, it's also hoped that some old standbys will still be around -- Heinz, Mellon, PPG, PNC, U.S. Steel, and yes, Alcoa -- to provide a level of comfort in our ever-changing world.

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