Leadership Profile: Elon Musk
Introduction:
Elon Musk is arguably one of the greatest leaders in business and innovation of the past few decades, and possibly into the future. As an adolescent, Elon Musk came to the realization that the most difficult thing was to come up with the right question. After much reflection, he decided the question that would shape the rest of his life: what things would have the greatest impact on the future of humanity’s destiny. Since then, Elon Musk has created and led many successful companies focusing on space and alternative energy. Elon Musk even became the second entrepreneur to found three companies with a market cap of over 1 billion dollars (Elon Musk Biography, n.d.). These three companies; Paypal, …show more content…
However, a vision alone doesn’t make a leader; a leader must be able to turn that vision into reality. Elon Musk shared this remarkable vision, and in doing so, founded SpaceX. Elon Musk recognized that for humanity to survive it must branch out into the cosmos and create colonies on other planets. However, in the short term, Musk’s first goal with SpaceX was to reduce the cost of space travel and subsequent rocket technology. This required Musk to convince investors of his vision of the future of space travel, a no easy task. As quoted from Blazek (2016), “Dolly Singh, former HR head at SpaceX, says about Elon Musk, “The thing that makes Elon Elon is his ability to make people believe in his vision.” Jim Cantrell, SpaceX’s first engineer, adds, “…Most of us can’t conceive these things working; he can’t conceive it failing”. Musk then had to persevere through the numerous challenges inherent in engineering new rocket systems: something never accomplished in the private sector. This included the failure of the company’s first three rockets and another failure as recently as this year. Nevertheless, through the leadership of Elon Musk, SpaceX now hold billions in contracts with NASA and is on pace to send humans to Mars within the next decade, and on
Introduction:
Elon Musk is arguably one of the greatest leaders in business and innovation of the past few decades, and possibly into the future. As an adolescent, Elon Musk came to the realization that the most difficult thing was to come up with the right question. After much reflection, he decided the question that would shape the rest of his life: what things would have the greatest impact on the future of humanity’s destiny. Since then, Elon Musk has created and led many successful companies focusing on space and alternative energy. Elon Musk even became the second entrepreneur to found three companies with a market cap of over 1 billion dollars (Elon Musk Biography, n.d.). These three companies; Paypal, …show more content…
However, a vision alone doesn’t make a leader; a leader must be able to turn that vision into reality. Elon Musk shared this remarkable vision, and in doing so, founded SpaceX. Elon Musk recognized that for humanity to survive it must branch out into the cosmos and create colonies on other planets. However, in the short term, Musk’s first goal with SpaceX was to reduce the cost of space travel and subsequent rocket technology. This required Musk to convince investors of his vision of the future of space travel, a no easy task. As quoted from Blazek (2016), “Dolly Singh, former HR head at SpaceX, says about Elon Musk, “The thing that makes Elon Elon is his ability to make people believe in his vision.” Jim Cantrell, SpaceX’s first engineer, adds, “…Most of us can’t conceive these things working; he can’t conceive it failing”. Musk then had to persevere through the numerous challenges inherent in engineering new rocket systems: something never accomplished in the private sector. This included the failure of the company’s first three rockets and another failure as recently as this year. Nevertheless, through the leadership of Elon Musk, SpaceX now hold billions in contracts with NASA and is on pace to send humans to Mars within the next decade, and on