Genius, and a means to an end
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To think that Musk is only in it to build a car business is short-sighted.
Yes, it is amazing that Tesla has generated over 400,000 pre-orders for the Model 3, and I think even the expectations within Tesla have been greatly exceeded. There is obvious pent-up demand and this pre-order book gives Tesla a great risk mitigation against bringing the Fremont factory fully on-line. (There is a lesson to learn there in and of itself.)
But if you want to understand the genius that is Elon Musk, you have to understand his true motivation.
Ever since he was old enough to dream, he has dreamed of a manned mission to Mars. One large enough to start a self-sustaining colony on Mars. He started asking himself the questions of how to build space-craft and he self-taught all of the literature that was available on the systems and dependencies that would be needed to send a team to Mars.
Then he asked himself how he was going to afford to buy rockets, and he founded an internet payments company that he later merged with PayPal.
He realized that to buy a rocket in the current ecosystem of space vehicles it was going to be extremely expensive due to all of the middlemen in the supply chain. So he hired people who were smart enough to create finished products from raw materials and created Space-X where he builds re-usable rockets at a fraction of the cost.
The next problem to solve would be the battery technology. Battery technology needs to be much more advanced to sustain a Mars mission than what is available today. How does one advance the state of battery technology? Build a demand generation mechanism for a bigger business, which is batteries. Build a business were government subsidies happen to be available. Cars are secondary. Tesla, and now the Tesla Powerwall, creates a vast playground where there are enough smart people working on the leading edge to advance the state of the art for battery technology. Tesla is just a demand generation mechanism for the battery business. A very well thought out one, but secondary to advancing the state of the art in batteries.
Battery technology is something that if cracked, is big money. Tesla won’t generate enough money to send people to Mars, but cracking the battery code would. Tesla gives him the platform to become a big player in the battery industry.
Elon’s sights have always been much higher and more farsighted than the businesses he’s created. And this has given him the fuel and chutzpah to build out the businesses needed to make his childhood dream a fair shot at becoming an adulthood reality.
As business leaders, what can we take away from this? Aim higher than your short-term goals, and your short-term goals will seem much smaller and easier to achieve. What are some Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG) you can set for your company, organization, or your legacy? Call me to set up a time to discuss.
© Mark Travis – All Rights Reserved http://www.travis-company.com
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