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You can't prove it, but Musk is not a one-hit wonder. He's transformed the space industry by sheer force of will (as a part time founder & CEO), as Tesla has do
by martindbp 5y ago
You can't prove it, but Musk is not a one-hit wonder. He's transformed the space industry by sheer force of will (as a part time founder & CEO), as Tesla has done for EVs, so it's quite reasonable to assign the success of Tesla to him.
- pydry 5y agoHis perception management skills are top notch and he works as an effective conduit for getting capital to engineers. The rest is...meh. In SpaceX's case they picked up on rocketry research where NASA left off because its budget was squeezed.
- martindbp 5y agoGetting funding, finding the most talented engineers, deciding what to build and motivating people are the high-level skills needed from a founder/CEO. I don't see any argument here against his importance to all companies that he's been involved in. Nobody's claiming he's building rockets all by himself.
- mbrodersen 5y agoNASA is a massively ineffective bureaucratic organisation. Even with an “unsqueezed” budget it still wouldn’t have achieved what SpaceX has achieved.
- lordnacho 5y agoIn this case it makes sense but in general you have to also ask about the environment. Was money cheap in that era? Was there a favourable media environment for that type of business? Was politics favourable? Etc.
- AussieWog93 5y agoTo be fair, Elon took over as CEO in 2008. Hardly a favourable environment for risky endeavours or capitalists in general.