Selected viewpoints from some esteemed North Carolina historians

It’s hard to keep High Point down. The world’s largest furniture market has stayed on top for 114 years by mixing innovation, fun and a dollop of the unusual.

A scrappy Asheville solar company gives a bright tint to this year’s list of the state’s largest privately held companies.

Charles Kauffman’s journey to recognition as a computing leader began as a kid in Reston, Va., where he played with an IBM PCjr.

Wes Carter, 37, became president in May on Atlantic Corp.’s anniversary. He took the reins from his father, Rusty, who remains CEO.

Eric Pike has initiated and overseen multiple transactions since 1998, when he took the reins at the Mount Airy-based construction and engineering company started by his grandfather, Floyd Pike, in 1945 to serve the electric power industry.

Julie Richter, chief financial officer at one of the state’s biggest hotel operators, has shown a mix of accounting acumen and relationship-building skills that have impressed investors and lenders and helped finance an expanding pipeline of hotels.

The tech and teamwork skills Brendan Morrissey honed in high school and college became building blocks that have helped make him one of North Carolina’s most successful tech executives.

Paul Thompson has emerged as a strong advocate for Hickory and a talented entrepreneur with a major logistics company.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee opened a casino in 1997 that has expanded to become a destination.

Rick Hendrick created a massive auto dealership network, helped George Shinn start the Charlotte Hornets and became a dominant owner on the NASCAR circuit.

A Honda business jet is being built in a hangar at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro.

The Rose family of Henderson was a pioneer retailer, opening dozens of stores across Virginia and North Carolina, but it never achieved the same scale as its Charlotte-based peers.

Academi today is a bigger version of the Blackwater that Business North Carolina visited for a cover story in June 2007

Camp Corral offers respite to children of deployed, injured, disabled or fallen service members.

The movie Masterminds, based on the state’s most famous money grab at the Loomis Fargo & Co. armored-car company in Charlotte, gets it partly right.

The layer-free management approach has worked at the GE Aviation Durham factory for 23 years.

CreativeMornings create the risky, weird and magical, all before 9.

North Carolina is benefiting from a nationwide hotel boom, but will investors check out early?

With too few businesses starting, the economy suffers. Promoting entrepreneurship needs to become a priority.

The Vance County seat of Henderson, perhaps best known as the hometown of broadcast icon Charlie Rose, struggles to prepare its children for a fast-changing world.

While the state's economy has changed, thoughtful storytelling stays the same.