Idea Agent

MY PERSONAL JOURNEY

An Urgency for Structure

ALMOST OVERNIGHT the technology group grew from five core technologies to nineteen, from being materials-centric to having a lack of focus. Acrid discussions ensued among the nineteen core technology directors—with an eighteen-to-one ratio of males to females—that now shared the table, with the newcomers asserting, with a hostility and style in sharp contrast to the polite corporate culture that defines Corning, that the corporation should become an optical systems company and that materials were “passé” in a photonics era. Maintaining a clear sense of strategy and priorities was hindered by the reporting structure: the nineteen directors no longer reported to a single research director, who could ...