This engrossing history of an extraordinary company, Corning Incorporated, chronicles how one of the oldest business enterprises in the world maintained its place as a global leader in technology for over 150 years. In the nineteenth century, Corning developed colored signal lights for railroads. In the twentieth century, it created Pyrex and color television tubes; today, it is a Fortune 500 company leading the international marketplace in areas such as fiber optics and photonics. If you use the Internet, drive a car, or simply turn on a light, then Corning is a part of your life. The Generations of Corning tells the fascinating stories of its founding family--the Houghtons, the inventors, and the adventures, behind Corning's remarkable achievements--from unexpected discoveries, like the laboratory mishap that led to Corning Ware, to the years of painstaking, often frustrating, research that led to its breakthrough in fiber optics. From 1851 to 1996, five generations of Houghtons made Corning a company that combined a culture of continuous innovation with a sense of loyalty to its employees and their community. Davis Dyer and Daniel Gross show how the critical changes in organization and leadership that accompanied each new generation helped Corning not just survive, but to prosper, and push itself to the cutting edge of materials technology in decade after decade. The Generations of Corning is a classic success story and a triumph of the inventive spirit.
The Houghton family brought the Industrial Revolution to Corning, New York, with a hot-glass factory and his friend's cut-glass industry. Although his friend's cut-glass industry failed during the first half of the 1900s, the Houghtons built the hot-glass factory into a Fortune 500 company over five generations. Thomas P. Dimitroff traces the history of the Houghton family, glass making in the United States, and life in Corning, New York, in this scholarly book. With the cooperation of Corning Inc. and Houghton family members, the author shares a trove of photographs and draws on his extensive research to give a rich portrayal of the city and the family that played a critical role in its development. The story begins in1635 when John and Ralph Houghton arrived in America from England and takes a decisive turn with the birth of Amory in 1813, who wasn't satisfied being a New England farmer. Deep inside, he was an entrepreneur - although he struggled in his early attempts. Discover the rich history of Corning Inc., and the amazing family that contributed to life-changing glassmaking developments in America and throughout the world.
Invaluable for the collector, curator, and dealer alike, The Complete Cut & Engraved Glass of Corning bring to the field of glass collecting a rich storehouse of detailed information from unpublished original catalog material in the Corning archives, including log-lost pattern identification.
The Houghton family brought the Industrial Revolution to Corning, New York, with a hot-glass factory and his friend's cut-glass industry. Although his friend's cut-glass industry failed during the first half of the 1900s, the Houghtons built the hot-glass factory into a Fortune 500 company over five generations. Thomas P. Dimitroff traces the history of the Houghton family, glass making in the United States, and life in Corning, New York, in this scholarly book. With the cooperation of Corning Inc. and Houghton family members, the author shares a trove of photographs and draws on his extensive research to give a rich portrayal of the city and the family that played a critical role in its development. The story begins in1635 when John and Ralph Houghton arrived in America from England and takes a decisive turn with the birth of Amory in 1813, who wasn't satisfied being a New England farmer. Deep inside, he was an entrepreneur - although he struggled in his early attempts. Discover the rich history of Corning Inc., and the amazing family that contributed to life-changing glassmaking developments in America and throughout the world.
How can tech-forward companies, institutions and non-profits stay relevant long term in today’s fast changing global economy? Written for leaders seeking proven strategies, this book by a veteran business advisor and leadership coach explains what large organizations can learn from family enterprises, and vice versa. When survival is threatened by disruption, or growth has stalled, the book shows why seasoned leaders and rising leaders from both family and non-family organizations should join forces for mutual benefit of combining innovation and long term thinking. Florence Tsai advances the field of family business studies with new evolutionary models, organizational frameworks, and case studies of dozens of leading family companies, including IBM, Corning, and New York Times. The book addresses growing problems of disruption—challenges best addressed by seasoned and rising leaders working together, since they have complimentary skills. Seniors bring stability and judgment, while rising leaders understand new markets and introduces innovative ideas. The world’s best family enterprises are masters of survival; what they can learn from non-family companies is how to stay nimble when change is accelerating at rates never seen before. Non-family organizations facing trust gaps can learn from successful family enterprises’ laser focus on stakeholder engagement. Families like Levi Strauss or Hermès have built trusted brands for generations. Facing disruption, Tsai explains how non-family organizations can insert long term thinking into the DNA of your organization by observing how enterprising families with enduring competitive advantages accomplish it. Strategies include how to develop future-forward mindsets supportive of innovation culture; how to nurture rising leaders who are intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs, and portfolio builders and prepare them to lead in their thirties. Phoenixes rising are the next-generation leaders who lead their family enterprise through intentional transformation in response to inevitable changes and yield successful growth. The book describes this mechanism in detail. Legendary Phoenixes profiled in this book include Irénée du Pont in the U.S., whose tech innovation at Eleutherian Mills transformed the gun powder industry; David René de Rothschild in France, who rebuilt a banking business from scratch; and John Elkann of Fiat in Italy, who led the Agnelli family through a succession crisis to emerge stronger. Stories of successful next generation innovators include John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in the U.S., Cristina Stenbeck of AB Kinnevik in Sweden; and Mikkel Vestergaard, inventor of LifeStraw, in Switzerland. With insights drawn from more than a decade of working closely with leading business families and advising the Chairmen and CEOs of their companies, the author argues that if we want to be guided by their long term success, it’s the pioneer spirit of the family leaders, plus the enterprising culture of the families themselves, not so much their products or their famous companies, that we should pay attention to. Written for the hackers and for the master architects, Phoenix Rising spotlights principled wealth creation and the shared value that comes from doing good while doing good business, engaging partners and stakeholders sustainably, for the lasting benefit of oneself and society.
No matter where you hail from, you're apt to have ties to the Finger Lakes Region. That's the well-supported message of a new book, A Spirited Trip Through the Finger Lakes & Upstate New York, in which the author ties the Upstate to places all over the world. A Spirited Trip Through the Finger Lakes & Upstate New York borrows the persona of early pioneers to personalize the rich history of the region and answer the question: How did things got to be the way they are? Why should someone from Massachusetts feel right at home when visiting upstate New York? Why do the ancestors of Winston Churchill reside in the cemeteries of Palmyra and Macedon? How did an English lord wind up owning millions of acres of Upstate property after his country lost it in the Revolutionary War? Why did a Canandaigua family become a major benefactor of the New York Metropolitan Museum?
"This nonfiction book documents 1,000 years of exciting English and American history from the perspective of one family--the Houghtons. From the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 AD, when our earliest ancestors first fought for William the Conquerer, to the 21st Century in America, this has been an epic adventure." "I have included a new chapter at the end of the book captioned '21st Century DNA Testing.' It provides, for the first time in print, fascinating information on the origins and lives of stone Age ancestors of the Houghton Family that lived in Europe over 300,000 years ago!" --from back cover.