Growing the Top Line

CHAPTER 4What GOODS AND SERVICES Will I Sell?

Third on our list is what you sell. Goods and services are things a company sells to generate revenue. It is a truth that without a client there is no revenue, but it’s also true that without the right goods and services, there is no revenue, either. You can’t gloss over this.

It is incredibly hard to know what the right goods and services are. Generally, there are two approaches that bound how most companies approach product development: You can either study the market for unmet needs or whitespace opportunities, or you can create markets with new product and service concepts that haven’t been seen before. Both are hard to do well, typically require a significant amount of time and investment, and often fail.

Corning has been producing innovative products for 169 years at the time of writing. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Corning for a number of years, and one of my favorite people there is Corning’s Innovation Officer, Marty Curran. Marty embodies the kind of client that you hope to get a chance to work with. He’s smart, funny, thoughtful, pragmatic, and, ultimately, a great leader. I first worked with Marty when he was the general manager of Corning Cable Systems, and in 2004/2005 we worked deploying a little thing called fiber to the home with Verizon Fios (acronym for Fiber Optic Service), which was the first major deployment of bundled video, phone, and data high‐speed access. While it’s a proven technology now, back ...