`

“ELON MUSK”
A Group Project
For

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

Submitted by:
Group 1: Sec CD1
Gourav Sehgal (201812013)
Ishita Bhatt (201812016)
Prasad Parab (201812028)
Rohan Borkar (201812033)
Vinita Jain (201812048)

Submitted to:
Dr. Jagganath Mohanty
INTRODUCTION
Elon Musk is an entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 (which later
became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. Musk became a multimillionaire in
his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers. Musk
made headlines in May 2012, when SpaceX launched a rocket that would send the first
commercial vehicle to the International Space Station. He bolstered his portfolio with the
purchase of SolarCity in 2016. As of December 2017, Elon Musk’s net worth is $20.2 billion,
according to Forbes. Elon Musk cemented his standing as a leader of industry by taking on an
advisory role in the early days of President Donald Trump's administration. Elon Musk has
probably the highest risk appetite among all the entrepreneurs in the world. When he goes all in,
he goes all in. This was his quote when he decided to use all of his personal wealth in Tesla and
SpaceX.

I WILL SPEND MY LAST DOLLAR ON THESE COMPANIES. IF WE HAVE TO MOVE

INTO JUSTINE’S PARENTS’ BASEMENT, WE’LL DO IT.

 Personal Life:
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971 to a Canadian mother and a South African
father. At ten his parents got divorced and around this time Elon developed an interest in
computers. He taught himself how to program, and when he was 12 he made his first
software sale of a game he created called Blastar. He obtained his Canadian citizenship in
1989, in part because he felt it would be easier to obtain American citizenship via that
path. In 2002, he achieved his goal of becoming a U.S. citizen. Elon Musk has been
married twice. He wed Justine Wilson in 2000. After a contentious divorce, Musk met
actress Talulah Riley, and the couple married in 2010. They split in 2012 but married
each other again in 2013. Their relationship ultimately ended in divorce in 2016. Musk
has five sons with ex-wife Justine Wilson.

 Education:
At age 17, in 1989, Elon Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and avoid
mandatory service in the South African military. He left in 1992 to study business and
physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in
economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.After leaving Penn, Elon
Musk headed to Stanford University in California to pursue a PhD in energy physics.
However, his move was timed perfectly with the Internet boom, and he dropped out of
Stanford after just two days to become a part of it, launching his first company, Zip2
Corporation. An online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites
of both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, a division of Compaq
Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock
options.
 PayPal:
In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services/payments company. An
X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it is known today,
and in October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock..

 SpaceX
Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or
SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building spacecraft for commercial space travel. By
2008, SpaceX was well established, and NASA awarded the company the contract to
handle cargo transport for the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut
transport in the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.

 Falcon 9 Rockets:
On May 22, 2012, Musk and SpaceX made history when the company launched its
Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the
International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed
there, marking the first time a private company had sent a spacecraft to the International
Space Station. In December 2013, a Falcon 9 successfully carried a satellite to
geosynchronous transfer orbit, a distance at which the satellite would lock into an orbital
path that matched the Earth's rotation. In February 2015, SpaceX launched another
Falcon 9 fitted with the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, aiming to
observe the extreme emissions from the sun that affect power grids and communications
systems on Earth. In March 2017, SpaceX saw the successful test flight and landing of a
Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened the door for more
affordable space travel. A setback came in November 2017, when an explosion occurred
during a test of the company's new Block 5 Merlin engine. SpaceX reported that no one
was hurt, and that the issue would not hamper its planned rollout of a future generation of
Falcon 9 rockets.

 Tesla Motors:
Elon Musk is the co-founder, CEO and product architect at Tesla Motors, a company
dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars as well as battery products
and solar roofs. Musk oversees all product development, engineering and design of the
company's products.

 Internet Satellites:
In late March 2018, SpaceX received permission from the U.S. government to launch a
fleet of satellites into low orbit for the purpose of providing Internet service.

 Other Inventions & Innovations:

Outside of his roles at SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has continually attempted to make his
innovative ideas a reality. His other invention and Innovation include Hyperloop, AI,
Neutralink, Boring Company, Flamethrower and High Seed Train.
STRATERGIC CHALLENGES
 Look for solutions to problems which are untouched. Elon worked as an intern at a
financial institution. At the time, the financial sector preferred to work in conventional
ways, avoiding changes. This is when he started online payments company X.com, which
was later transformed into PayPal and became amarket leader in the online payments
market.

 In order to be an industry leader, Elon worked hard to get all the details and expertise in
technology. While his first venture was about web listings, he later moved to the financial
sector. He didn’t stop there after that he entered the automobile, space, and aeronautics
industries, only to dominate them. Elon Musk had anin-depth knowledge of every subject
he talks about. When he entered the space industry and started meeting suppliers and
vendors, most of them thought of him as another billionaire fond of throwing money
around, only to be proven wrong; Elon always enters an industry with complete
preparation and clear goals.

 Elon Musk faced a lot of difficulties but he believed in the idea of survive and knew if
you survive you will eventually be successful. There was a time when Tesla Motors was
near bankruptcy and SpaceX had failed to successfully launch its first rocket despite
multiple attempts. But Elon absorbed all this pain and suffering and managed to survive,
only to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs of his time.

 In order to be a market leader you need to have a vision and strive hard to ensure it comes
true. Predicting what the world will be like in another 20 years is something everyone
engages in, but it is important to shape the desired future and that is what Elon Musk
does. One day he is revealing his self-driving electric car, while on another he is talking
about passenger flights to Mars in the coming decade. On the one hand, he is closely
working with companies for future transportation services like Hyperloop, while on the
other, he is warning the world about the dangers of artificial intelligence.
 To be committed to your idea. Every new thing starts with an idea, the success of which
is completely dependent on the way one execute it. One of the key reasons for Elon’s
success is the way he executes his ideas. While many people know Elon by the success of
Tesla Motors or SpaceX, his very first venture was a web listing project like Yelp back in
the ’90s, when only a few people used the internet. At that time, no one was convinced
about his project, but his dedication paid off when after a few years, Compaq bought it.If
you want to get the most out of your team, put them in roles that are natural to their
behavioural drives. If you try to turn your employees into something they are not, you
will lose talent.
 To have a simple approach. To succeed in automobile industry where so many have
failed, Musk created a very simple master business :1)Build sports car 2)Use that money
to build an affordable car 3)Use that money to build an even more affordable car 4)While
doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options

 Finding the right people. Elon surrounds himself with smart, talented people, who have
the expertise he is missing. He believes in talent over numbers. Elon Musk believes that
 if you want to get the most out of your team, put them in roles that are natural to their
behavioural drives. If you try to turn your employees into something they are not, you
will lose talent.

 Facing failures. The first three rockets built by SpaceX produced crash-and-burn videos.
In 2008, Tesla nearly collapsed during the financial crisis. When Tesla needed cash to
fund the Model S, Musk chose to bankrupt himself — giving up the money he earned
from his success with PayPal — rather than let it die. He sunk his last $35 million into
the company. In 2009, the company landed a $465 million federal loan, which it used to
get the car into production

STRATEGIC INTENT:
The strategic planning of Elon Musk was totally dependent on his visionary approach. He had his
intensions very clear that, he should have a mission which should be ahead of others’ timeline at
least by 10 years. Some of his strategic planning roots were:

 Lead with purpose:

“You have to have a very compelling goal for the company. If you put yourself in the shoes
of someone who’s talented at a world level, they have to believe that there’s potential for a
great outcome and believe in the leader of the company, that you’re the right guy to work
with. That can be a difficult thing, especially if you’re trying to attract people from other
companies.”- Elon Musk

Elon’s purpose is simple. He is determined to revolutionize three industries. He has said that
he didn’t start Space X because he thought building rocket ships were going to be great for
his portfolio; Space X is his way of making his mark on the world. No matter what the goal,
leaders must develop a vision for where they would like to be and work until they reach their
destination. In his case, that place is Mars.

 Creative:
“The problem is that at a lot of big companies, the process becomes a substitute for thinking.
You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you
to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.”- Elon Musk. He believes that
process prohibits the ability for innovation to take place. In many cases, continued formal
education can be a negative because it denies creativity. Without creativity, progress and
innovation are impossible.

 Encourage Innovation:
The problem is that at a lot of big companies, the process becomes a substitute for thinking.
You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you
to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.”- Elon Musk. He believes that
 process prohibits the ability for innovation to take place. In many cases, continued formal
education can be a negative because it denies creativity. Without creativity, progress and
innovation are impossible.

 Be Decisive:
“Without decisive action to lay the groundwork today, the massive volume of affordable,
high-efficiency panels needed for unsubsidized solar power to outcompete fossil fuel grid
power simply will not be there when it is needed,”- Elon Musk.
Unless you commit to acting in the present, the change you want will never happen in the
future. He finds out what he wants and then acts on his ideas. Strategy and action lead to
results.
 Comfortable with change:
On being a CEO, “it’s eating glass and staring into the abyss”- Elon Musk.
You never know which challenges are going to arise. Successful leaders are able to adapt in
any situation and continue pushing forward towards their team’s goals. Whatever comes their
way, they understand how to enable their teams to leverage their strengths to find solutions
and innovate.

 Set high standards:

“The number one issue for me is finding superlatively talented people. I think we’ve been
fortunate to find some very, very talented people at SpaceX, but that is always the governor
on growth.”- Elon Musk.
It is common knowledge that acquiring talent is one of the single most prevalent business
challenges for leaders. What do you do to invest in your managers once you find the best
people? The job isn’t done once you find and acquire top talent. The best leaders are self-
aware. Gifted leaders understand the power of adjusting their behaviours and leadership style
to inspire their people.

STRATEGIC ACTIONS OF ELON MUSK

Musk’s leadership behaviours coincide with each of Bennis and Nanus’ four strategies
typically used by transformational leaders.

 Vision: There is no doubt that Musk has a vision. He has a vision of a world that is no longer
reliant on fossil fuels, is maximizing their use of green energy, and is exploring space and
building colonies on Mars. This vision is attractive, simple, understandable, beneficial, and–
quite literally–energy creating. Even though to most people his vision is neither realistic nor
believable, Musk has made it his mission to make it both. Elon Musk and SpaceX have
proposed the development of Mars transportation infrastructure in order to facilitate the
eventual colonization of Mars. The design includes fully reusable launch vehicles, human-
rated spacecraft, on-orbit propellant tankers, rapid-turnaround launch/landing mounts, and
 local production of rocket fuel on Mars via in situ resource utilization (ISRU). SpaceX's
aspirational goal is to land the first humans on Mars by 2024.

 Social Architect: In many ways, Musk has inspired his employees. In each of his ventures–
including the development of the Tesla Model S electric car and the launch of the SpaceX
Falcon launch vehicle–Musk has managed to mobile people to accept a new group identity
and a new philosophy. For Musk, that philosophy is maintaining unprecedented standards of
excellence and clearing unforeseen paths of progress in nearly abandoned industries. Musk’s
address to his employees of SpaceX after the failure of the first launch attempt–a pivotal
moment in which he said that “a failure in leadership would have destroyed us”. Musk
encouraged and motivated his team with fortitude and ferocity.

 Trust: Musk continually earns the trust of his followers by being predictable and reliable,
even in situations that are uncertain. Time and again, when Tesla struggled through various
crises of financial difficulty, Musk continued to fund the company out of his own pocket,
ultimately investing over $100 million into the electric car company. It should be noted that
research shows that transformational leadership is most effective in times of crises; as such, it
is unsurprising that Musk’s transformational leadership strategies were most apparent in
these uncertain situations.

 Creative deployment of self: Transformational leaders have a high “positive self-regard”

and focus on “their strengths rather than dwelling on their weaknesses”. Furthermore, they
have a tendency to immerse themselves in their tasks and the overarching goals of their
organizations. Musk is known for not being shy about his capabilities–he speaks openly
about his ability to learn complex topics, including rocket science, through reading books.
Additionally, to compensate for areas of weakness, he sources experts–recruiting
professionals who are top in their field and relying on them to do the heavy lifting while still
holding them to his standards of excellence in performance. Finally, in the way of
immersion, Musk is known for sleeping very little and for throwing himself into projects
with his team. For example, when Tesla was in need of funding, he spent 4 weeks on the
ground with his team in an effort to fit his electric motor into a Smart car as a means of
impressing the executives and ensuring their financial support.
Elon Musk and his vision and the standard transformational leader is the reliance on
ethical standards, values, and moral convictions. The strengths of transformational leadership
being its strong emphasis on followers’ needs, values, and morals, its attempt to move people to
higher standards of moral responsibility, and its being fundamentally morally uplifting. In fact, it
is this quality that allows for distinction between Musk and pseudo-transformational leader, such
as Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones, who rely on coercive uses of power to enact changes.
Understanding of Musk’s leadership as having a moral quality or not will likely not be solidified
until it is able to be analyzed as hindsight. Considering the magnitude and rate of change he is
initiating in various industries a strong argument could be on made both sides.
ANALYSIS OF ACTIONS:

 Tesla is a story stock. Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor of corporate finance and
valuation at NYU Stern School of Business, defines a story stock as a stock “where the
story is so dominant in both how people price the stock and what determines its value that
the numbers either fade into the background or have only a secondary effect.” Story
stocks share three defining characteristics. One, they are usually infant companies, viz.
the value is derived from the future growth. Two, they’re targeting a big market. Three,
and most important to this discussion, the CEO is woven into the cloth of the company,
becoming inextricable from the company’s story. Tesla is a story stock. And Musk is
crucial to that story.

 Strategy and vision are a critical part of Tesla. Tesla is a young company that is still
navigating its path to maturity. Setting strong strategic goals is vital to effectively
navigate that path. A Harvard Business Review article cited that strategy comprises 21%,
on average, of what CEOs do. It may potentially be a higher figure for growing
companies as CEOs direct that growth. And Musk is the engine behind that strategy, a
vision that has fueled the success of Tesla for the last decade and a half.

 Musk inspires employees. After spending time on-site at Tesla, Tim Urban from Wait
but Why reported several discussions with Tesla employees:
“Working with him isn’t a comfortable experience, he is never satisfied with himself so
he is never really satisfied with anyone around him…the challenge is that he is a machine
and the rest of us aren’t.”
“Elon wants to know, ‘Why are we not going faster?’ He always wants bigger, better,
faster” by the same person who a few minutes later was emphasizing how fair and
thoughtful Musk tends to be in handling the terms for a recently fired employee."
While many employees cited Musk is not easy to work for, they all agreed they deeply
respect him. And respect is, arguably, harder to come by.

 Tesla's operational bloopers. To start, it has often missed production targets, most
recently producing only 5,000 of the 6,000 Model 3 units per week. This could be
suggestive of systemic operational problems in the organization, speculated to be a
symptom of Musk’s inability to delegate. Operational issues are often addressed with
Musk stepping in to rectify or accelerate the process.

 Tesla’s financial bloopers. The first of which was the acquisition of SolarCity. Conflicts
of interest aside, the most glaring problem with this acquisition is its negative cash flow.
The financial profile is also unlikely to drastically improve in a sector that lacks product
differentiation. Then there was Tesla’s choice of debt to meet its capital requirements. As
 Damodaran points out, “Tesla’s decision to borrow more than $5 billion was almost
incomprehensible, given Tesla’s standing at the time there was no good reason that could
be offered for that borrowing, since none of the usual arguments for debt applied,” (e.g.,
equity inaccessibility, tax benefits). This brings us to the last point: the debate about
taking Tesla private. The financial profile of Tesla does not indicate it is a good candidate
to initiate a transition from public to private company. It's not a mature company and its
market price is unlikely to be undervalued compared to its cash flows and earnings,
which, to reiterate, are negative.

 Recent inconsistent and erratic behavior. To End The Ever Growing Skills Gap
Employers Must Change Their Outdated Hiring Practices. To date, Musk has arguably
acted as both an asset and a liability to Tesla. Now let’s take a quick look at where Tesla
stands today and what possible challenges it may face going forward.

 Scale: While revenues have grown, gross profit has plateaued, indicating the costs
associated with increased revenues have not scaled, but grown correspondingly.
Presumably, efficiency and scale will be introduced with the aid of technological
advancements in production, which have yet to materialize effectively to date.
 Capital needs: Its difficulty in scaling operations so far has an expensive
consequence. Tesla will have to secure considerable capital for reinvestment in its
business to produce and hit its ambitious production goals (which was once stated as
1 million cars per year by 2020). Furthermore, in one analysis run by Damodaran, he
states the ratio of global auto industry sales to invested capital is a meager $1.29.
Tesla is well below that at ~$0.20.
 Business model: Tesla’s business model is predicated on a pyramidal structure
truncated in three. At the top of the pyramid sits the Roadster, a car designed for those
can spend $100,000 on a motor vehicle. The next tranche is its Model S, a high priced
mid-level car (although not quite the Roadster). Lastly, at the bottom of the pyramid
is the mass-market car. This tranche, the fattest one to signal volume-play, is the
Tesla 3. For many mass-market consumers, Tesla 3 still comes with sticker shock,
coming in much higher than its original price of $35,000. Producing the Tesla 3 en
masse at a reasonable price will not only be an engineering and operational challenge,
but it will also be critical to Tesla’s future success.

Based on the evidence, reasonable cases can be built for or against keeping Elon Musk as the
CEO of Tesla. What tilts the scales in favor of keeping him is the rarity of his skillset: the
brilliance of his strategic vision.
IMPACT OF ACTIONS
 Revolutionizing of Tesla motors and Space X from near Bankruptcy

Investing $70 Million of his personal funds into Tesla Motors, a company founded by
obsessive Silicon Valley engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tappening, Elon Musk began
the major shareholder of Tesla Motors. While everything was going fine for Tesla Motors
until 2007, with rec00000eiving Global Green product design of 2006 and an additional $100
million investment from the Google founders, things turned around completely for Musk and
Tesla motors.

Martin Eberhard’s strategic miscalculation affected the transmission for Tesla’s Roadster and
also the pricing ended up double than what was initially presumed. Tesla missed the shipping
dates by a year and it didn’t go into production until late 2008. Tesla Motors was headed for
a downfall and this made obvious to people as to why there hasn’t been a successful
automobile company born in the United States, since 112 years, when Ford Motors started
operations.

With missed deadlines, price gauging of the product, mismanagement of operations,

everything was in a turmoil at Tesla Motors. This was when Elon Musk stepped in and took
charge of the operations himself.

Having fired everyone involved in the stalling of the product development, including its co-
founder Martin Eberhard, Elon Musk announced himself as the CEO in 2008, investing an
additional of $55 million of his own money.

Elon Musk sold his McLaren F1 and invested his last $20 million into the company to save
Tesla Motors from bankruptcy. By cutting down staff, reducing suppliers and closing some
of the offices, Elon Musk brought Tesla Roadster to the market in 2008, with an increase of
$20,000 over the original price.

While Tesla Motors was at its all-time low in 2008, such was a similar case with SpaceX, in
which Elon Musk had invested $100 million of his own money received from the PayPal
deal. While going through a divorce, US economy meltdown, Tesla Motors crisis and three
failed SpaceX missions between 2006 and 2008, Elon Musk was at his lowest ebb.

But things turned around when SpaceX’s final and fourth mission of Falcon 1 successfully
reached the orbit, making it the first privately funded company to have orbited Earth.

This was when Elon Musk signed a $1.6 billion contract with NASA and another round of a
$40 million investment into Tesla Motors on Christmas Eve. You can hear it from the man
himself on the near-bankruptcies of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, in his hour-long Google
Hangout talk with Sir Richard Branson.
 Announcing of Tesla Motors going private –

On August 7, 2018, Musk dropped a bombshell via a tweet: "Am considering taking Tesla
private at $420. Funding secured."

The announcement sent Tesla stock spiking, before it closed the day up 11 percent.
Meanwhile, the CEO followed up with a letter on the company blog, calling the move to go
private "the best path forward." He promised to retain his stake in the company, and added
that he would create a special fund to help all current investors remain on board.

However, the announcement also opened the door for legal action against the company and
its founder, as the SEC began inquiring about whether Musk had indeed secured the
funding as claimed. Additionally, several investors filed lawsuits on the grounds that Musk
was looking to manipulate stock prices and ambush short sellers with his tweet.

Musk sought to clarify his position on August 13 with a statement in which he pointed to
discussions with the managing director of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund as the
source of his "funding secured" declaration. He later tweeted that he was working on a
proposal to take Tesla private with Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake as financial advisers.

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that,
as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD
when he fired off his headline-grabbing tweet and overheard him making phone calls to
drum up the funding he promised was already in place. However, the news quickly turned
serious again when it was reported that Tesla's outside directors had retained two law firms
to deal with the SEC inquiry and the CEO's plans to take the company private.

On August 24, one day after meeting with the board, Musk announced that he had reversed
course and would not be taking the company private. Among his reasons, he cited the
preference of most directors to keep Tesla public, as well as the difficulty of retaining some
of the large shareholders who were prohibited from investing in a private company. Others
suggested that Musk was also influenced by the poor optics of an electric car company
being funded by Saudi Arabia, a country heavily involved in the oil industry.

On September 29, Musk agreed to step down as chairman of Tesla's board for three years
as part of an agreement with the SEC. He also has to pay a $20 million fine.
 Innovation and Adapting the Change –

After having been inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams,
Elon Musk believed that the Internet, renewable energy and space travel would be the ones
having the biggest impact on the lives of the people worldwide.

Elon Musk dropped out of the Applied Physics and material science program at Stanford
University just two days after starting this new venture. Zip2 allowed all major print
publications to offer additional commercial services to their readers. This IT company was
bought by AltaVista, a major search engine then, for cash of $307 and another $34 million
in stocks and securities, making it one of the biggest cash acquisitions back then.

After having bought a McLaren F1, a Dassault private jet, and a 1,800 ft condominium,
Elon Musk once again set out to revolutionize the payments industry.

Musk began working on X.com, which was later merged with Peter Thiel’s rival company
Confinity to form PayPal. After getting his share of $180 Million from a deal that saw
PayPal being sold to eBay for $1.5 Billion, Elon Musk had his targets set to space
engineering and electric vehicles

In August 2013, Elon Musk released a concept for a new form of transportation called the
"Hyperloop," an invention that would foster commuting between major cities while
severely cutting travel time. Ideally resistant to weather and powered by renewable energy,
the Hyperloop would propel riders in pods through a network of low-pressure tubes at
speeds reaching more than 700 mph. Musk noted that the Hyperloop could take from seven
to 10 years to be built and ready for use.

In August 2016, in Musk’s continuing effort to promote and advance sustainable energy
and products for a wider consumer base, a $2.6billion dollar deal was solidified to combine
his electric car and solar energy companies. His Tesla Motors Inc. announced an all-stock
deal purchase of SolarCity Corp., a company Musk had helped his cousins start in 2006. He
is a majority shareholder in each entity.

“Solar and storage are at their best when they're combined. As one company, Tesla
(storage) and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-
scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed.
NON CORPORATE PARALLEL AND ITS IMPACT

 Elon Musk thinks and acts on a larger, more cosmic scale than we’re( *anyone* )
accustomed( *habituated* ) to from entrepreneurs. Elon Musk has become a household name
synonymous with the future.

 Be it electric vehicles (Tesla) or sending rockets into space (SpaceX), Musk's larger-than-life
reputation attracts its fair share of hero-worship. Musk can get a hundred breathless reporters
to write about him and his companies with little more than a concept drawing and a tweet.

 Elon Musk believes that we're all probably trapped in a "Matrix"-like pseudo existence.

 The universe is 13.8 billion years old, so any civilizations that may have arisen throughout the
cosmos have had a lot of time to hone their technological know-how, the SpaceX founder
quoted on Joe Rogan's popular podcast, "The Joe Rogan Experience."

 "If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will be indistinguishable from
reality, or civilization will end. One of those two things will occur," Musk said. "Therefore,
we are most likely in a simulation, because we exist."

 "I think most likely — this is just about probability — there are many, many simulations," he
added. "You might as well call them reality, or you could call them multiverse."

 The "substrate" on which these simulations are running, whatever it may be, is probably quite
boring, at least compared to the simulations themselves,

 Why would you make a simulation that's boring? You'd make a simulation that's way more
interesting than base reality," Musk said, citing the video games and movies that humanity
makes, which are "distillations of what's interesting about life."

 The billionaire entrepreneur is far from alone in this elucidation; a number of physicists,
cosmologists and philosophers find the simulation hypothesis compelling. If even one
advanced alien civilization with a predilection for creating simulations has ever arisen out
there, the reasoning goes, then it could theoretically pop off thousands — or perhaps even
millions or billions — of "fake" universes. And it would be difficult for the inhabitants of
these digital realms to figure out the truth, because all the evidence they could gather would
likely be planted by the creators.

 Indeed, this idea is one of many possible explanations for the famous Fermi paradox, which
basically asks, "Where is everybody?" ("Everybody" being aliens, of course.)
For example, Musk reiterated his concerns about unregulated and uncontrolled artificial
intelligence; stressed that a bright and appealing future for humanity involves exploring and
settling other worlds, both in our solar system and beyond; and discussed the traffic-reducing
potential of extensive tunnel systems, which his Boring Company aims to build in big cities
around the world.
 Tesla, the electric-car company is established due to need for our species to wean itself off
fossil fuels. Musk described humanity's mass displacement of carbon from the ground to the
atmosphere (and from there into the oceans) as an incredibly dangerous experiment whose
ultimate outcome is unknown.

 "We know that sustainable energy is the end point. So why are we doing this
experiment? It's the dumbest experiment in human history."

 Also,Musk has an idea for an electric supersonic plane that takes off and lands vertically. But
this development of the concept as a priority at the moment, given the other pressing
problems humanity needs to solve.

 According to musk, “Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the
job •done, not through the ‘chain of command’. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain
of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.

 He makes it clear that his focus is on the work. Making the end product come out the other
end at the lowest cost, with the lowest number of touches, at the highest quality, as quickly as
possible, is the only goal. Anything that has to happen in between should be done with that
objective in mind.

LEARNING AND FUTURE PREDICTIONS

Key learnings from Elon Musk will help the business managers in this competitive world, to
succeed. The key take aways are:

 Have a powerful vision:

The most successful leaders usually have a powerful vision. They share it with their
teams and chart a sure path on how they are going to achieve it. Moreover, they are able
sto exert influence so that other people can see their point of view. Just like Elon Musk,
successful leaders have a revolutionary vision. Not only do their ideas have a positive
effect, they completely change the way the industry works. He co-founded PayPal and
transformed the industry of money transfer across the world. Therefore, Elon teaches us
the lesson of having a vision that is transformational and powerful.

 No one does amazing things for the money:

"I've interviewed over 100 people now on my podcast. Each of the 100 have achieved
amazing results in their life," notes Altucher. "But none of them have done if for the
money." Neither did Musk, who Altucher quotes as saying: "Going from PayPal, I
 thought: 'Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the
future of humanity?' Not from the perspective, 'What's the best way to make money?'"

The takeaway: if you want to do great things, focus on the difference you'll make in the
world (or to yourself), not the financial rewards

 Persistence pays:
Not all of the lessons of Musk's career are off the wall and unexpected. Sometimes, he
proves that conventional wisdom is right. Like with this quote: "Persistence is very
important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up."

 In hiring, talent beats numbers:

Some entrepreneurs tackle difficult problems by trying to throw a whole lot of warm
bodies at them. Not Musk.
"It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers
will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know
something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the
task incredibly expensive," Altucher quotes him as saying.
So next time you need to hire your way out of jam, spare a thought for this bit of wisdom
and take the time to find the right talent rather than just hoping that brute numbers will
save you.

 Finding the right questions is most of the battle:

Apparently, Musk's favorite book as a teenager was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy. Here's the biggest lesson he took away from it: "It taught me that the tough thing
is figuring out what questions to ask, but that once you do that, the rest is really easy."

 Constantly question yourself:

You'd think that someone with Musk's achievements might be satisfied with his efforts,
but that's not the case. Musk claims he constantly strives to improve himself.
"It's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what
you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of
advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning
yourself," he said. If Musk isn't resting on his laurels, neither should you.

 Good ideas can spring from anyone, anywhere:

One of the interesting things that Elon Musk has done is to make his ideas open-source.
He has proposed them to the public and asked for factual improvement whenever and
wherever possible. By doing this, he teaches us that great leaders take advantage of
existing communication infrastructures so as to allow larger groups of people to take part
in solving a problem. Elon understands that he may be smart, but the collective effort of a
 group of people can give results that he could not have achieved on his own. This is
known as teamwork.

 Consider failure in your plans and come up with a back-up plan:

The main reason why we don't do what we desire is because we are afraid of failure. For
example, we don't apply for our dream jobs because we are afraid to fail. We also don't
approach people who we think are attractive because we are afraid to fail. Instead of
letting this fear stop you, you should acknowledge it and come up with a plan to handle
its effects. Before he started the SpaceX program, Elon Musk dedicated $100 million to
the endeavor. He said that if he failed to launch a rocket into space with that budget, he
would shut down operations and shelve the idea. His first two launches cost him $90
million and they both failed. The third one cost him $10 million and it succeeded. From
this we learn not to be afraid of failure by coming up with a plan to manage it.

 Make every effort to build an organization whose culture and ideals are similar to
yours:
Elon Musk is well known for his ruthless leadership style. He fires employees over small
mistakes. Moreover, he will never accept that something is impossible. Anyone who
suggests this gets fired too. He has very high performance expectations of the people
around him. Many may criticize it but it helps him to get closer to his vision of advancing
human civilization and establishing human communities on Mars. From this we learn that
you should surround yourself with the people who share your vision and are just as
dedicated to it as you are.