When Steve Jobs wanted glass screens for the primary iPhone in 2007, he didn’t simply place an order with Corning. He challenged its CEO to confront his personal fears about not with the ability to produce sufficient.
Wendell Weeks, who has led the 175-year-old glass and supplies science firm for 20 years, just lately recounted the pivotal dialog that helped outline Apple’s most profitable product. Speaking on Fortune‘s “Leadership Next” podcast with hosts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller, Weeks revealed how Jobs manipulated him into taking over what appeared like an unattainable activity.
The story started after Weeks initially pitched Jobs on a distinct innovation: an artificial inexperienced laser that might flip smartphones into projectors. Jobs dismissed the thought bluntly. “That’s the dumbest concept I’ve ever effing damage in my life,” Weeks recalled Jobs saying. However Jobs noticed potential in Corning’s technical capabilities and ultimately contacted Weeks about making a sturdy glass display screen for the iPhone.
The challenge was enormous. Jobs wanted mass production of a scratch-resistant glass within six months for the iPhone’s June 2007 launch. Weeks told him Corning had invented a material that could work—Gorilla Glass—but lacked the manufacturing capacity to produce it at scale.
Weeks’ board of directors instructed him to suggest a second supplier to Jobs, concerned Corning couldn’t meet Apple’s needs alone. “Steve and I are sitting alone, and he says, ‘No, you’re going to do all of it,’” Weeks said. “And I’m going, ‘what I’m telling you is like, like, I really can’t.’”
That’s when Jobs delivered his challenge: “Do you know what your problem is?” Jobs asked. When Weeks admitted he didn’t know, Jobs continued: “You’re afraid. You know, you’re afraid I’m going to launch the biggest product in history, and I’m not going to be able to do it because you failed, and I’m going to eviscerate you.”
Jobs acknowledged this was a legitimate concern—”Now the truth is, I will, that’s true. If you fail, I will,” Weeks recounted—but then reframed the conversation entirely.
“But look what you’re doing,” Jobs told him. “You are putting your reputation [first]. You’re worried about you looking bad, and you’re keeping your people from greatness. Imagine how they’re going to feel—the folks that are working in 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’ll go fix that,” Weeks told Fortune. “And we went away, and we said, ‘Yes.’”
Lucrative gamble
The gamble paid off spectacularly. Corning transformed its Harrodsburg, Kentucky, facility—originally built in the 1950s for Cold War-related products—to manufacture the first iPhone glass screens. The plant has remained central to Apple’s supply chain ever since. In August 2025, Apple announced a $2.5 billion commitment to provide all iPhone and Apple Watch cowl glass at that facility, making it the primary time 100% of Apple’s cowl glass can be manufactured in the USA.
The investment will triple production capacity at Harrodsburg and increase the workforce by 50%, adding at least 200 hourly production jobs plus additional engineering positions. Apple and Corning will also establish an Apple-Corning Innovation Center at the plant to develop advanced materials for future products.
Apple CEO Tim Cook described the partnership as creating “the largest and most advanced production line ever created for smartphone glass,” adding that “any customer anywhere in the world who buys a new iPhone or Apple Watch will be holding precision glass made right here in Kentucky.”
For Weeks, the lesson from Jobs extended beyond that single deal. Reflecting on what makes great entrepreneurs different, he noted their relationship with risk. “Most of us view risk as all the ways that that you personally can look like an idiot,” Weeks said on the podcast. But Jobs “looks at things very straightforwardly and is damn fearless.”
The anecdote also illustrates a leadership philosophy Weeks has maintained throughout his tenure. “Fundamentally, every act of creation is an act of passion,” he said. “It’s not an act of cold logic framework.”
Path to leadership
Weeks joined Corning in 1983 after working briefly at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and have become CEO in 2005. His path to management wasn’t with out setbacks. Within the late Nineties, he ran Corning’s optical fiber division and invested closely in web infrastructure throughout the tech growth. When the dotcom bubble burst in 2001, Corning’s inventory plummeted from roughly $100 to $1 per share, and the corporate misplaced 99 % of its worth.
Weeks recalls asking company leadership not to fire him. “I said, ‘I’m chaining myself to the wheel here. I’ll be a janitor or whatever it is, but I’m staying until this gets fixed.’ They said, ‘Well, it’s not going to be a janitor. We’d like you to become president,’” he told Fortune.
That bet on optical fiber eventually proved prescient. The technology now accounts for 30% of Corning’s revenue and has surged with the rise of artificial intelligence and data centers. In October 2024, Corning announced a $1 billion multiyear deal with AT&T for next-generation fiber. The corporate’s market capitalization stands at roughly $71 billion.
Weeks, who serves on Amazon’s board of directors and holds 44 U.S. patents, described management as essentially about service quite than command. “I feel leaders overexpress as a result of we eat an excessive amount of—enterprise, junk meals, literature and the like—that essentially main is an act of service,” he stated. “And everytime you flip that and also you as a substitute are the one that’s being served, at that second, you’ve gotten misplaced the plot.”
Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to a plumber father and a secretary mom—each of whom he stated have been alcoholics—Weeks credited Corning’s tradition with shaping his strategy. “You probably have it in your background, you understand that you just come from a reasonably chaotic background,” he stated. “I used to be fortunate that I used to be all the time good sufficient to comprehend that if I needed to be a greater man, I wanted to hang around with higher folks.”
You possibly can watch Fortune‘s full dialog with Wendell Weeks under.
