Yet when viewed through a strategic lens, Corning’s approach to innovation makes perfect sense. The company’s business strategy focuses on selling “keystone components” that significantly improve the performance of customers’ complex system products. Executing this strategy requires Corning to be at the leading edge of glass and materials science so that it can solve exceptionally challenging problems for customers and discover new applications for its technologies. That requires heavy investments in long-term research. By centralizing R&D, Corning ensures that researchers from the diverse disciplinary backgrounds underlying its core technologies can collaborate. Sullivan Park has become a repository of accumulated expertise in the application of materials science to industrial problems. Because novel materials often require complementary process innovations, heavy investments in manufacturing and technology are a must. And by keeping a domestic manufacturing footprint, the company is able to smooth the transfer of new technologies from R&D to manufacturing and scale up production.