“Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson is the second book I have read about Musk. I had earlier read the book "Elon Musk: How the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is shaping our future" by Ashlee Vance.
I am fascinated by the amazing achievements of Elon Musk.
I am fascinated by the amazing achievements of Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is an adorable nerd, extraordinary entrepreneur, audacious dreamer and inspiring visionary. SpaceX and Tesla are his crown jewels. He dared to start SpaceX and Tesla as start-up ventures to compete against the huge NASA and the big car companies. He started the space venture after reading a lot of books on space technology. He learnt more by talking to experts, questioning and challenging them. He drove scientists and engineers to innovate and do what they thought was impossible. He gave them unrealistic deadlines and made them do incredible cost-cutting. They would not have achieved what they did, but for his push. Musk blends his visionary outlook with attention to details and hard work. He took plenty of risks and blew up many rockets to learn from failures. He thrived on crises, challenges and risk-taking.
On the other hand, Musk has a dark side. As the boss he has no empathy. He drives employees crazy and hurts them. He makes extremist comments outside his domain expertise. He supports obnoxious people like Trump. He has failed many times and made mistakes. His acquisition and management of Twitter is controversial.
Here is what Isaacson has to say,
“One can admire a person’s good traits and decry the bad ones. But it’s also important to understand how the strands are woven together, sometimes tightly. It can be hard to remove the dark ones without unraveling the whole cloth.
Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man- children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.
His life had long been an admixture of historically transforming achievements along with wild flameouts, broken promises, and arrogant impulses.
My previous blog on Musk
https://floatingweed.blogspot.com/2016/05/elon-musk-daring-techpreneur.html
