Last week, PBN held its inaugural Fastest-Growing & Innovative Companies event, celebrating the achievements of 24 enterprises in the region. And based on the profiles included in this week’s special section, the key to their successes was investment.

Time after time, these leaders of the region’s economy revealed the importance of investing – in people, in processes, in technology.

From Sea Corp., the Middletown defense contractor that has a public spot to identify ideas worth pursuing, to Gilbane Inc., the $4.3 billion construction and development company that has embraced cloud-based tools to improve performance, to American Partners Inc., the IT talent recruiting agency that invests and trains its staff to deliver best-in-class service, to Citizens Financial Group Inc., that is developing tools to take advantage of the growing shift to mobile commerce, all the companies PBN honored understand that future performance depends on committing resources today. And we are all the better for those commitments. •