And sometimes you can win for losing.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Companies move away from North Carolina

In the recruiting game, you win some, you lose some--and sometimes you lose after you think you've won. In 2002, North Carolina lost a promising biotechnology company, Winston-Salem-based Pilot Therapeutics. It moved to Charleston, S.C., after South Carolina offered a $16 million incentives package.

Pilot had only 20 employees but said it would have 180 by 2007 making health treatments, including one that it was developing for asthma. Its loss was a blow to North Carolina leaders, who hadn't forgotten a bigger defeat in 1992, when BMW built an auto-assembly plant in Greer, S.C., because of better incentives. About 4,900 work there.

But moving vans can travel north, too. By the end of the year, Fort Mill, S.C.-based Compact Power Inc. will relocate its head-quarters and some manufacturing to Union or Gaston county. That's about 25 jobs, but the number should double within two years, founder Roger Braswell says. He owned Charlotte-based Southern Tree and Landscape for 20 years before merging with two similar companies. The result--Landcare USA Inc.--went public in 1998.

What's prompting the move? Raleigh-based venture-capital firm Dogwood Equity is investing nearly $5.5 million in Compact Power, a wholesale distributor of hydraulic equipment such as tillers, graders and backhoes that Braswell started in October. The company also makes trailers that transport the equipment.

"It's got a proven executive in Roger Braswell," says...