Corning

When most of us think of Corning, Incorporated, we remember cooking in CorningWare dishes. But Corning is much more than an ovenware producer. It is a company that has pushed the boundaries of innovation in glass and ceramics. Today, its products can be found in everything from optical fiber to “gorilla glass” smart phone displays.
 
Corning engaged The Winthrop Group in anticipation of its 150th anniversary in 2001. There was a wealth of historical information available internally, even a much-visited glass museum, but there had been no full-scale history designed to help customers and employees alike understand what made Corning special. Margaret (Meg) Graham and Dave Dyer dove into a research project that resulted in three different books.
 
The Generations of Corning: The Life and Times of a Global Corporation by Dave and Daniel Gross (Oxford University Press) is a history of the entire company and its community. It charts Corning’s history, with an emphasis on the founding family, the Houghtons.

The second book is Corning and the Craft of Innovation, also published by Oxford, which Meg wrote with Alec T. Shuldiner. As Meg will tell you, too often histories of innovation focus on product innovation alone. While Corning had more than its share of significant product innovations, it pursued even more innovation in materials and processes. Most important, it did this generation after generation, often in hard time or at moments of uncertainty.

Finally there was Dave’s Corning: A Story of Discovery and Reinvention, a lavishly-illustrated coffee table book that drew on historical images from Corning’s collection to engage a broader, more informal readership.