Both companies beat the incumbents in their industries by combining a clear view of how technology was changing the scope of the possible with a fierce devotion to pushing that technology even further. That is familiar from other Silicon Valley success stories
A risk-taking boss does not mean a cavalier company. Ms Shotwell points to a dichotomy in attitudes to risk at SpaceX. It is in many ways a very unified operation. Most of the managers and engineers have desks in the manufacturing facility, in among production experts and line workers. People circulate easily, trying out new ideas and learning from colleagues who, in a more traditional structure, they might never meet. But the designers and engineers are encouraged to be mavericks, whereas the operations and manufacturing teams are most definitely not. A former senior executive says that Mr Musk takes the risks he thinks he has to, but does not run extra ones just to cut corners. Another insider describes him as “a risk taker for himself, but a risk mitigator for everyone around him”.
Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, a non-profit organisation that spreads ideas, says that Mr Musk is “uniquely good at system-design thinking”. He reduces thorny problems to what he sees as their essence—typically expressed in terms of physics—and then extends his analysis to technologies, business systems, human psychology and design in an attempt to solve the issue.
He then created a culture that emphasised experimentation, rapid learning and incremental improvements, along with a system of sticks and carrots that pushed people to squeeze out inefficiencies
The Economist | The impact investor
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