When Steve Jobs needed glass screens for the first iPhone in 2007, he didn’t just place an order with Corning. He challenged its CEO to face his own fear of not being able to produce enough.
Wendell Weeks, who led the 175-year-old company and the Material Science Company for twenty years, recently recounted a very important conversation that helped define Apple’s most successful product. Speaking to Good luck“Leading” next next “podcast with Hodts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller, weeks revealed how jobs have called him to take on what seems to be an impossible job.
The story began after weeks of initially seizing jobs with a unique invention: A green laser made to turn smartphones into projectors. Jobs dismissed the idea outright. “It’s a very popular idea that I’ve been working hard on in my life,” Weeks remembers the works as saying. But Jobs recognized the strength of Corning’s technical skills and eventually contacted Weeks about creating a durable glass screen for the iPhone.
The challenge was great. Jobs wanted mass production of impact-resistant glass within six months for the launch of the iPhone 2007. He told his colleagues that Corning had developed a material that could work – gorilla glass – but did not have the capacity to produce at scale.
The board of directors of the churches who ordered him to raise the second supplier in the works, concerned Corning could not fulfill the needs of the apple alone. “Steve and I are sitting alone, and he says, ‘No, you’re going to do everything,'” Weeks said. “And I go, ‘What I’m telling you is like, like, I don’t really know.'”
That’s when Jobs relayed his challenge: “Do you know what your problem is?” Tasks in question. When the churches admitted that he did not know, the works continued: “He is afraid. You know, he is afraid that I will launch the biggest product in history, and I will not be able to do it because he failed, and I will kiss you.”
Jobs admitted that this was a legitimate issue – “Now the truth is, I’ll do that, if you fail,” Weeks recounted – but then completely rejected the conversation.
“But look at what you’re doing,” Jobs told him. “You put – yours honor [first]. Concerned about you looks bad, and keeps your people from talking. Think how they feel – the people who work at that plant in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, all your investors… you’re putting yourself above them and your company. “
The statement hit its mark. “And I said to them, You’re right. I’m afraid. And I’m going to go and fix that,” said weeks Good luck. “We went, we said, ‘Yes.'”
Gambling pays off wisely. Corninid transformed its Harrodsburg, Kentucky, facility in the 1950s for products related to the cold war – to produce the first iPhone glass screens. This plant has remained at the center of the apple supply ever since. In August 2025, apple announced a commitment of 2.5 billion to produce all the glass for the iPhone and Apple
The investment will triple production capacity at Harrodsburg and increase the workforce by 50%, adding at least 200 production man-hours and additional engineering positions. Apple and Corning will also establish an Apple-Corning Innovation Center at the center to develop advanced materials for future products.
Apple CEO TIM Cook Cook described the partnership as creating “the largest and most advanced line ever made for a smartphone or any new watch in the world that will be carrying the new iPhone or Apple watch that will be carrying glass made here in Kentucky.”
For weeks, the study of activities expanded beyond that one. Thinking about what makes big businesses different, he noted their relationship with risk. “Most of us risk looking like an idiot,” Weeks said on the podcast. But the works “look at things directly and without courage.”
Anecdote also reveals that the philosopher’s churches have kept throughout his time. “Certainly, every act of creation is an act of love,” he said. “It is not an act of cold frame of logic.”
Weeks joined Corning in 1983 after a brief stint at Sportswaterhousecoopers, and became CEO in 2005. His approach to leadership was not without obstacles. In the late 1990s, he championed Opting Fiber Direction and invested heavily in Internet infrastructure during the tech boom. When the dotcom bubble burst in 2001, Corning’s stock went from about $100 to $1 per share, and the company lost 99 percent of its value.
Weeks remembers asking the company’s leadership not to fire him. “I said, ‘I’m getting myself behind the wheel here. I’m going to be a janitor no matter what, but I’m staying until this is fixed.’ They said, ‘Yeah, it won’t be a janitor. We’d like you to be President,'” he told Good luck.
Betting on fiber optics ultimately proved prescient. Technology now accounts for 30% of Corning’s computing revenue and has overtaken the rise of artificial intelligence and data centers. In October 2024, Corning announced a $1 billion multiyear agreement with AT & T for the next generation FOIFE-Gebile. The company’s market capitalization represents approximately $71 billion.
Weeks, who serves on Amazon’s board of directors and holds 44 US patents, described leadership as fundamentally about service rather than command. “I think Verexpress leaders because we use a lot of business, junk food, books and stuff like that – that’s basically leading the action,” he said. “And any time you ride that and instead it’s the worshiper, at that point, you’ve lost the plot.”
Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to a Secretary-Secretary father – both of whom claimed to be of Corning heritage – in the weeks he found his way. “If you have it in your background, you can see that you come from behind the turmoil,” he said. “I was lucky that I was always smart enough to see that if I wanted to be a better man, I needed to hang out with better people.”
You can watch Good luckThe full interview with Wendell Weeks below.
This story was originally posted on Fortune.com
