During Elon Musk’s dramatic, sometimes pugnacious, occasionally baffling campaign to acquire Twitter, we heard many of the same questions from both his followers and his critics. Why did he want to buy the company in the first place, and what was he planning to do with it? Will he make a lot of money or will he lose all of it? Many questions simply boiled down to: “What is he thinking?!” Or, put another way, is Musk out there just winging this, or does he have a strategy? And if so, what is the Musk strategy?
Does Elon Musk Have a Strategy?
A look across Tesla, the Boring Company, SpaceX, and his other companies reveals a consistent vision, organization, and ability to mobilize resources.
July 15, 2022
· Long read
Summary.
Does Elon Musk have a strategy? Or is he just out there winging it? Looking at Musk’s many companies, common themes stand out across three areas: what fits into his vision for problems to solve, how he designs an organization as a solution to those problems, and why he can so effectively mobilize resources towards those solutions. Musk seeks problems that require navigating scale and overcoming complexity. Organizationally, he favors vertical integration and closed systems. To finance his projects, he’s able to marshal tremendous resources because he has large personal stakes in his companies and is able to stir public and investor emotions, even if the logic of how a given business will succeed may not be clear.
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