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the producer of Iron Man, was making the film, he even sent Robert Downey, Jr. to spend time with Musk in the SpaceX factory so that he could get some inspiration for his character.
He was a studious child, always buried in a book, sometimes for up to 10 hours a day according to his brother. He was addicted to science fiction but also non-fiction books such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
As far as Musk was concerned, education was simply “downloading data and algorithms into your brain,” and hence he found conventional classroom learning exceptionally slow and frustrating. Almost everything he learnt was from his own reading, not from the classroom.
“If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.” – Elon Musk
“Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.” – Elon Musk
However great your idea, there is no substitute for hard graft and the right timing.
If you have a hunch about the potential of an emerging market, be prepared to put your money where your mouth is.
We are all learning throughout our careers.
Money alone doesn’t buy you credibility. You need to do your research, plan, and bring in the right level of expertise.
“I think it is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.” – Elon Musk
If you want to make the very best products, you have to hire the very best people in the field.
“A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.” —Elon Musk
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” – Elon Musk
He made this claim in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2011. What is more, he doesn’t expect this to be a one-off achievement: in June 2015 he went one stage further, telling etv.com that by 2035 thousands of rockets will be flying to Mars each year, enabling us to establish a self-sustaining space colony with more than one million inhabitants.
The best ideas aren’t necessarily new ideas. Be prepared to take products or services that already exist and rework and improve them for the modern world.
“I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.” —Elon Musk
“There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.” – Elon Musk
People will always try to rain on your parade. Keep your head down, keep working and ignore idle gossip.
“I always have optimism, but I’m realistic. It was not with the expectation of great success that I started Tesla or SpaceX… It’s just that I thought they were important enough to do anyway.” —Elon Musk
“If you’re co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do… If you don’t do your chores, the company won’t succeed… No task is too menial.” —Elon Musk
In “Background and Education” we looked at Musk’s university career, and though he abandoned his own doctorate at Stanford University after only two days, other institutions have moved to recognise his contributions to technology regardless. In the UK, Surrey University (one of the world’s foremost centres for the development of satellite technology) awarded Musk an honorary doctorate (DUniv) in Aerospace Engineering, and he also has an honorary doctorate of Engineering and Technology from Yale University. His third honorary doctorate, was in design, from the ArtCenter College of Design in
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