Finding a Lower-Risk Path to High-Impact Innovations

The pursuit of major innovations is often seen as a risky endeavor. However, there is a lower-risk way to commercialize certain types of high-impact innovations — by viewing initial applications as “lily pads” that a company can reach before leaping to the next market.

Joseph V. Sinfield and Freddy Solis

Summer 2016

When people talk about innovation, they often envision the big technical or conceptual advances that change the way we live — developments that have profound and lasting impact. Corning Inc.’s research in low-loss fused silica in the 1970s, which paved the way for breakthroughs in fiber-optic communications, sensing, and imaging applications, falls into this category. Early research ...