27A – Reading Reflection No.

Book: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance
1) Going into this book, I had a fairly good understanding of Musk. I have kept up with the major headlines related to his work. One of the things that surprised me was that he is from South Africa. Based off his accent it makes sense, but I always assumed he was from the UK. Without a doubt what I like more than anything about Musk is his willingness to embrace risk when an incredible opportunity presents itself. This trait is what has made him so wildly successful, from his success with X.com and PayPal to his current ventures. If there is one thing I dislike about Musk, it is his hubris. However, I think this is born out of his incredibly high confidence, which is necessary in his line of work.
2) Musk is exceptional at game-planning. With insight that would make the best NFL coaches jealous,this is what allows Musk to take giant ideas like "colonize mars" and boil them down into realistic business plans.
3) The reading wasn't really confusing, the book was fairly straight-forward. You could argue the most confusing part was trying to understand why Musk is willing to put himself through so much. Despite experiencing so much early success, he continues to push his limits with increasingly big ideas.
4) I would ask him how he plans to compete with other luxury car brands entering the EV market and how Space-X can make space exploration profitable. These are big questions which are key to the long-term success of Space-X and Tesla.
5) Hard work is imperative to Musk's style of pulling off massive successes by the skin of his teeth!

Comments

  1. WilliamolApril 19, 2020 at 11:18 PM

    Great analysis I also wrote a reflection on his book in first reading. I'm actually not very impressed of his book. As every entrepreneur, Musk did encounter a lot of failures in a business and personal life as well. That is intersting how Musk combines inventor, businessman, and employee - 3 in 1. As businessman he is willing to go all in, and he is chasing his dream for better humanization. I admire his passion to bring improvements and change into our lives, bring progress to human race, and invent new technologies that benefit everyone.

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