Lessons Learned from Gorilla Glass
Over the years I have been blessed with the opportunity to travel for business and pleasure. Most of the travel has been in the U.S. for the purpose of teaching yet along the way I have made it my mission to learn from each trip as well as enjoy the journey. These amazing experiences have shaped my thinking and continue to impact my personal and business growth. I am excited to share some of those learnings with you and I look forward to hearing about your experiences and learnings on your journey through life.
I think it best if I start from the very beginning. I live in West Palm Beach, Florida and have for most of my life however I was born in Corning, New York where many of my wonderful family still live. My first travel memories are those of traveling as a child for the winter and summer holidays to upstate NY to visit my family. I have such fond memories of fishing, gardening, sledding and of course visiting the Corning Museum of Glass.
Corning was first known for their development of the bulb-shaped glass they developed to encase Thomas Edison’s incandescent lamp in 1879. They later invented a manufacturing process to mass produce these bulbs making them affordable to many. This was just the beginning. Many of us in the optical industry know Corning for the invention of photochromic glass lenses.
What an example of innovation Corning has been. Corning has for 140 years continued to invest in R & D to stay relevant in an ever changing world. It hasn’t always been easy for Corning. As the world changed over the past 140 years they had to change as well. A critical decision took place for Corning in 2007. 6 months before the iPhone was released on the market Steve Jobs called Corning’s CEO Wendell Weeks asking him to develop a glass cover for the phone that would be shatter and scratch resistant. The biggest challenge was that he had to have it ready for market in 6 months. Corning was able to go to the shelf of past inventions (from 1960 to be exact) and re-purpose glass that had been invented for car windshields and never used. Remarkably a normally 2 year project was completed in 6months and what we know as Gorilla Glass is now used on the majority of smart phones and many laptops and T.V.’s as well.Corning says that since 2007 it’s delivered 58 square miles of Gorilla Glass–the equivalent of 28,000 football fields. Corning has a history of great teamwork amongst their employees and one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the tech industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58&v=nc_6jA3Qj0M
Corning is also known in their community for giving back. Corning Glass employs more people than any other company in their town and they invest in community activities, buildings and charities on a regular basis.
Every time I think of my second home I think of all I have learned from Corning Glass:
1. Always Innovate
2. Be on Alert for new ways to stay relevant
3. Stay focused on what you do well
4. Be ready to revisit/repurpose ideas from the past (You already have what you need in knowledge and possibly technology you just need to get started)
5. Strengthen your teams
6. Have a Social Purpose (give back to your community)
7. Tell your story
