New Business Opportunity Scouting Manager

Role Purpose

The New Business Opportunity Scouting Manager is responsible for originating and shaping new growth ideas for Corning by scouting emerging technologies, unmet customer needs, and adjacent market spaces. This role sits at the front end of the innovation funnel: generating a steady flow of well-framed, evidence-backed opportunities. The ideal candidate combines technical fluency with strong market curiosity, is energized by open-ended discovery, and can translate weak signals from technology and customer landscapes into concrete, actionable business concepts. Success in this role depends on collaborations with internal technology communities and external expert networks, and on the judgment to separate interesting technology from investable opportunity.

Job Selling Points:
•    Opportunity to directly shape the company’s future growth agenda
•    High visibility with senior business and corporate leadership
•    Broad exposure across innovation, strategy, M&A, commercialization, and partnership development
•    Ability to work on both organic and inorganic growth opportunities
•    Platform to influence emerging businesses beyond the core
•    Strong development opportunity toward broader business, strategy, or general management leadership roles

Key Responsibilities

Ideas Origination (primary focus)
•    Generate and continuously refresh a pipeline of new business opportunity ideas, framing each with a clear articulation of the customer "job to be done," the underlying technology enabler, and the potential fit with Corning capabilities or outside investment options.
•    Conduct in-depth market and technology research to surface unmet and unarticulated customer needs, including white-space and adjacency analysis.
•    Develop and pressure-test opportunity hypotheses, using primary interviews, expert calls, and secondary research to validate or kill ideas quickly.
•    Engage deeply with technology and industry experts, startups, universities, and VC/ecosystem contacts to stay ahead of market and technology trends and identify emerging opportunities early.
•    Design and lead ideation sessions with internal stakeholders, bringing external insight and provocations that inspire new product and business concepts.
•    Package ideas into clear, compelling opportunity briefs and business cases for senior management review and prioritization.

Technology Scouting and Assessment
•    Continuously monitor and analyze technology advancements, with a focus on breakthroughs that could disrupt, impact, or enhance Corning's product offerings.
•    Assess emerging technologies for maturity, differentiation, defensibility, and commercial potential.
•    Demonstrate agility in adapting to new technological paradigms and incorporate this knowledge into opportunity generation and strategic planning.
•    Actively network within industries of interest to build relationships that lead to business development opportunities.
•    Represent Corning in industry forums, conferences, and professional networks to enhance the company's profile, expand scouting reach, and advance strategic interests.

Customer Engagement and Insight
•    Engage customers on technical and select commercial topics to understand their needs, roadmaps, and pain points, and to source new opportunity ideas directly from the market.
•    Translate customer insight into validated need statements and early product-market fit hypotheses.
•    Facilitate discussions between customers and internal technology and product teams to test concepts and sharpen direction.

Technical Insight Sharing
•    Serve as a technical and market-insight resource to senior management, providing recommendations on technology-driven opportunities and risks.
•    Share scouting findings across internal technology communities and cross-functional teams, fostering a culture of curiosity, external awareness, and continuous learning.
•    Build and maintain internal networks across R&D and business units to ensure technological insights inform early-stage concept development.

Opportunity Development and Handoff
•    Own ideas through early validation and concept definition, then transition qualified opportunities to product development, business development, or program teams with clear documentation and rationale.
•    Provide ongoing subject-matter and market-insight support to receiving teams as needed, without carrying primary program management accountability.
•    Maintain a transparent opportunity pipeline and reporting cadence, tracking idea status, validation progress, and conversion outcomes.

Experiences/Education - Required

•    Bachelor's degree; MBA/PhD is a plus
•    Technical background, especially in electronics, new materials, semiconductor, telecommunications, or green energy is preferred
•    Strong academic record
•    Fluent in English and Mandarin
•    5+ years of work experience, with 2+ years of investment-related experience, preferably in consulting, investment banking, corporate/business development, venture capital, or technology scouting
•    Strong analytical and quantitative skills, including the ability to structure ambiguous problems and reach defensible conclusions with incomplete data
•    Demonstrated ability to conduct primary research and expert interviews to build market insight
•    Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal
•    Highly motivated and intelligent with the ability to work effectively in a team environment
•    Highly proficient in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word
•    Strong work ethic and ability to manage multiple concurrent research streams
•    Willing to travel depending on needs (domestic 20–30%, international 5%)

•    New business ideation and opportunity framing
•    Growth strategy development
•    Commercialization strategy
•    Inorganic growth / M&A support
•    Due diligence and target assessment
•    Deal sourcing and external opportunity mapping
•    Business case development
•    Market research and megatrend analysis
•    Strategic and financial assessment
•    Executive communication and storytelling
•    Cross-functional leadership
•    Innovation screening and portfolio prioritization
•    Ability to bridge technical innovation and commercial opportunity
•    Stakeholder management across global and regional teams

Experiences/Education - Desired

•    Experience in display, semiconductor, electronics materials, optical materials, ceramics, packaging, or adjacent advanced technology sectors
•    Experience with venture investment, startup evaluation, or minority investment activities
•    Experience supporting integration planning following transactions
•    Experience creating sourcing channels, partnership models, or investment mechanisms
•    Prior strategy consulting experience strongly preferred
•    Experience supporting both organic and inorganic growth initiatives
•    Experience in Asia commercial strategy and global intelligence / market insight work

Soft Skills:
•    Enthusiastic, personable, positive attitude, and high integrity
•    Intellectually curious with a bias toward exploration; comfortable operating in ambiguity and with open-ended problems
•    Indefatigable/persistent, pro-active, self-motivated with the ability to work under limited supervision
•    Passionate about building relationships and networking at a professional and personal level
•    Strong oral and written communication skills along with good listening skills
•    Attention to detail and organized
•    Ability to learn quickly and to grasp financial/business terminology and concepts