Currently longtime companies/brands are trying to stay afloat long enough to create business models and innovations that enable them to remain viable businesses, or are simply shutting their doors – unable to change quickly enough to remain relevant in today’s change-driven world.
Then there’s Corning.
Corning doesn’t simply churn out new products. Corning excels in creating entirely new categories of products – across a broad array of industries.
Highly Innovative – For More Than 160 Years
Corning, based in Corning, NY, with 35,000 employees worldwide, 2015 revenues of nearly $10 billion and net income of nearly $2 billion has been in business more than 160 years. However, you wouldn’t get that sense from today’s operations. (1)
One exciting growth driver is ‘Gorilla Glass’, very resistant to scratching, is used in a high proportion of smartphones worldwide, is a relatively recent product that’s in its fourth generation. Gorilla Glass now accounts for over $1 billion in sales. Other recent innovations also make sizeable contributions to Corning’s growth and profitability.
Corning’s CEO, Wendell Weeks, identified four strategies he believes drive success in a “world of creative destruction”:
Corning’s initial “big opportunity” came in the late 1870s when they were approached by Thomas Edison. He needed a firm that could make the glass for his incandescent light bulb. By 1908 Corning had developed a mass manufacturing process for these bulbs, and they accounted for half of company revenues.
Corning has continued to create new opportunities through strong R&D that have paid off well.
“At Corning, the lab is driven by what Weeks calls ‘grand challenges.’ For generations, one of those ongoing challenges has been ‘Glass breaks. Fix it’”
Innovation the Corning Way
Corning is driven by two types of insights that lead to category creation: 1. technology insights, invention of a new technology that needs to find a market, and 2. market insights, new opportunities that could be met with a new technology. Corning invests heavily in their research labs to provide a continuous stream of technology insights.
And, they listen well to their customers’ ideas and problems. Steve Jobs told Weldon Weeks about his then radical idea of making the whole surface of the phone a touchscreen. The surface had to be scratch proof, but he had yet to find a plastic to meet his needs. What Weldon Weeks heard was: “Jobs was going to create a new category of mobile device – the smartphone. And smartphones – all smartphones! – were going to need a new category of glass that did not yet exist.” He told his lab team, “if we create a solution (new glass), we’ll have a problem waiting to suck it out of us (smartphones).”
In 2007 the iPhone launched with Corning’s Gorilla Glass. By 2012 Gorilla Glass was on a billion devices worldwide – with nearly $1 billion in revenue and 70% of category profits.
Key Market Segments
Corning has identified the following as their current key market segments:
Looking Forward
Corning’s continued success in merging technological innovations with market-driven needs that not only solve identified customer problems, but create entirely new product categories, using a very institutionalized innovation process, their future looks very bright!
Considering that they have exceptional success in collaborating with their customers, (e.g. Apple, Dell, BMW, Sony, Ford) continuing their process of sharing ideas and listening to customer ideas and problems appears to be an excellent strategy.
Recalibrating Actions:
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