Thursday, October 13, 2016

Elon Musk’s Wild Ride (Bloomberg)

Final paragraphs from an Elon Musk profile by Ashlee Vance; tangentially, see SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has done the ‘real’ Iron Man several favors (Recode)
"With advances in cars, energy, and space exploration, Musk has ushered in a new industrial age. The world of machines and infrastructure suddenly looks poised to advance at a rapid clip. It does not seem hyperbolic to suggest that Musk has played a major role in changing the world.

That we forget all this is a curse of Musk’s own making. At every point where his companies seem to be on stable footing, Musk takes on more and promises more, erasing the memory of past gains. He might now be addicted to one-upping himself.

Wall Street and casual onlookers often find Musk’s approach abhorrent, and this makes perfect sense. They want consistent earnings-per-share figures and straight talk, while he’s in an inventive fugue state more concerned with trying to save mankind from oblivion. Musk lives in a way that few of us would choose and has a tolerance for risk that would drive most of us nuts. It’s precisely because Musk has operated his companies on the edge of what’s possible that he has achieved so much."
Elon Musk’s Wild Ride

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