Creative destruction: the state's global giants, while disappointing investors, paved the way for a robust economy.

• Author: Mildenberg, David
• Position: Up Front

Suppose your stockbroker called on Jan. 17, 2000, giddy over the news that drug-industry giants Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham were merging in a $68 billion deal. Let's buy some shares in the big Research Triangle Park employer, he said, and, because we want a diversified portfolio, let's add some Bank of America Corp., the giant Charlotte bank that shocked the world with its own $62 billion deal two years earlier. And, because we love each of North Carolina's three major metro areas, let's play it safe and buy shares in old reliable Wachovia Corp. of Winston-Salem. It would have been a noncontroversial investment strategy. And a very poor one: Today, GSK and BofA shares trade for at least 15% less than when the broker called. And we all know how Wachovia turned out.

Had anyone realized that GSK, BofA and Wachovia would be such a hot mess 15 years later, surely the outlook for North Carolina's economy would have been worse than dismal. Because of their economic impact and civic-minded cultures, the three companies, along with IBM Corp., have shaped North Carolina as much as any other corporations or politicians over the last half-century. It is hard to imagine Charlotte without former BofA CEO Hugh McColl Jr., or Research Triangle Park without Glaxo execs Bob Ingram or Ernie Mario or Charlie Sanders. It's equally hard to imagine what the state's cultural community would look like without the tens of millions of dollars donated by the three companies.

But isn't capitalism an amazing thing? North Carolina's outlook is equally or more rosy now than in 2000, a credit to a more diverse economy that continually overcomes big obstacles and world-renowned research...