Alumni Profiles

Community Profiles

Thomas R. Hinman T'83
Peter F. Volanakis D'77, T'82

"New businesses are stressful. They’re risky. They’re exhausting. I admit I sometimes wonder if I'm crazy.” —Tom Hinman "Successful innovation is not done by individuals but by experienced teams." —Peter Volanakis

Building an Innovation Machine

In MBA circles, the most often told career stories revolve around the fast-paced, high-dollar world of high finance or the fast-track, high-intellect pursuit of consulting to people in high places. Are stories about careers in general management lacking in hip? Deficient in zip? Maybe. But if you think that no fast track and no quick riches means no drama, read on.

Peter Volanakis and Tom Hinman built their careers at Corning Incorporated from the ground up. Both came to the company directly from Tuck, and neither has ever left. And both are experienced in leading the development and commercialization of breakthrough innovations inside a large organization. If there is a general-management challenge that demands excellence like no other, this is it. It's a challenge that Corning stares in the face every day, and the company has a rich, 150-year history of successful technology launches to show for it.

Except, perhaps, a particularly dark spot in the fall of 2001.

For several years leading up to that time, Corning's runaway sales of fiberoptic cable and photonic components to the telecommunications industry had more than quadrupled the company’s stock price. But when the dotcom bubble burst and the long-distance and cable TV industries recognized that their infrastructures had been overbuilt, those sales plummeted. "It was brutal. We were worried about the company's viability," recalls Volanakis, who, as a member of Corning's six-person management committee, juggled one no-win decision after another to restore financial health while preserving high-potential-growth programs. Revenues dropped from $7 billion to $3 billion, and the company had $4.5 billion of debt to contend with. Corning's stock price dropped from more than $100 a share to $1. Among new business units that were shelved was a biotechnology venture being built by Hinman and showing early signs of success. Volanakis says that another Tuck grad, Vice Chairman and Chief Financial officer Jim Flaws T'73, "was the architect of our financial recovery, the person around whom our senior team coalesced."

Characteristically, it was on the back of yet another breakthrough innovation—display glass for flat-screen televisions and computer monitors—that Corning rose again. Beyond-expectations sales in that category have restored the company to health, but the experience of the last four years has changed it forever. And it has given Volanakis, who is now chief operating officer, and Hinman, vice president and general manager, a new mission: to help build Corning into an even stronger, fitter, and more productive innovation machine.

For Volanakis, Corning needs to get away from a reliance on single, runaway successes, which have always carried the company from one era to the next. In the 1920s, it was lighting; in the 1950s and 1960s, TV glass and cookware; and catalytic converter substrates for automotive emissions control in the 1970s. Fiber optics launched the company into the stratosphere in the 1990s, and display glass rescued it from the subsequent wreckage.

Part of the strategy to bring greater balance and stability to Corning will simply be holding onto existing business longer rather than divesting as soon as competition intensifies. That will let Corning use the cash flow from mature business units and ventures to fund innovation. But doing this may not be that easy: Corning's management is so passionate about building new businesses that it is comparatively inexperienced when operating in mature markets. "We get bored," says Volanakis. "We like to develop new stuff, not slug it out in older businesses. That's got to change for us."

Corning also plans to diversify by broadening the range of early-stage technologies in which it invests. "We win by being first to develop materials-based, keystone components for larger systems with strong intellectual-property protection," says Volanakis. "But a product can take 10 to 20 years to develop, and we drill a lot of dry wells." To ensure Corning makes solid choices, he has helped create senior-management forums for long-range (decades), mid-range (two to five years), and near-term innovation management. "Our entire senior leadership is engaged in project selection, pacing, and portfolio management. Successful innovation is not done by individuals but by experienced teams."

Both Hinman and Volanakis credit Corning's success as an innovator to its method of developing executives. Hinman recalls an early assignment in Corning's strategy group that gave him ready access to senior management at a very young age. Upon receiving his subsequent assignment as a manager on a manufacturing shop floor, he was told "You’ve been a guest in King Arthur's court. Now you should go off and try to earn your seat at the table." Humbling. But he swallowed the pill and now recognizes the wisdom in the advice—and in the company's approach to leadership-building.

The assumptions underlying Corning's method are these: general management is hard. Refining its art and practice is a lifetime pursuit. There are no shortcuts. Close mentoring and a rich and diverse set of career experiences are crucial. The best way to master the art of leadership is to find a company you like when you are young and stay there.

These days, Hinman is busy building his second new business unit—Corning Diesel Technologies—that will commercialize advanced filters that reduce diesel emissions by some 90 percent. New regulations that force the use of filters go into effect around the world in the next few years. Corning is not alone, however, in going after the opportunity. (Coincidentally, parts of Hinman's biotech unit have been resurrected and are also being launched.) After his earlier, tough experience in biotechnology, one might forgive Hinman if he sought an assignment with less of a burden of uncertainty. "New businesses are stressful. They’re risky, and they’re exhausting," he says. "I admit I sometimes wonder if I'm crazy. But I love the challenge." Besides, at Corning, innovation isn't a choice. It's what you do.

In pursuit of Corning's mission, Volanakis and Hinman partnered in the research that led to a new book by Tuck Professors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution.