Elon Musk's
Top 4 Entrepreneurial Traits
Elon Musk is widely admired for visible entrepreneurship. While
there are lots of impressive leaders, few touch his superhero scale.
Some of Musk's characteristics are by
chance--like being an immigrant from Africa. (Just think about that next time you're
voting on immigration policies.) Or having parents who divorced when he was
nine. Or having a family that could afford top education. Many of
Musk's most entrepreneurial characteristics, however, are behavior choices
within your own control.
So what are those elements of his
secret sauce?
Imagination
As a child in Africa, he read about the
United States in comic books, and set his mind on coming. In college, he became
convinced there were three areas that would most change the future of the world
for good: the Internet, sustainable energy, and the ability to live outside our
planet. He has stayed true to these dreams.
Persistence
When you're disrupting systems,
building new infrastructure is a painful process of two steps forward, one
stumble back. For example, this video captures four years of exhilarating take
offs and brutal crashes of SpaceX's Falcon 9.
Musk
exercises persistent in more mundane matters as well. For example, in
February of this year, after more than a decade, he finally got the Tesla.com
domain. Before this year, his car company had to park at
TeslaMotors.com.
Systems disruption
When Musk first practiced his
entrepreneurship, his explorations were less spectacular than space flight
disruption. In fact, his first few businesses were a lot like other businesses:
a computer game, a nightclub, and an online tourism guide. The sale of that
guide, Zip2, provided him his first significant capital, which he invested the
very next month into the company that became Paypal.
Since then, he's always targeted disrupting
systems instead of innovating incrementally. In other words, Musk would be more
likely to invent communications implants that replace smartphones (systemic)
than to build an app (incremental).
Commitment
The
fourth behavior trait you'll see again and again in Musk is his depth of
commitment. A widely cited example of this is his compensation
plan at Tesla, which eschews most salary and
all cash bonuses, and pays Musk in stock options that vest only as Tesla meets
operational goals set by the board.
You
can also see commitment in how Musk handles backlash. Consider the past
hullabaloo over Tesla fires. While Musk was quite confidence in Tesla's safety
in a blog
post he wrote about Tesla safety, he took
action anyway and amended the Tesla warranty to cover fire damage even if it
were caused by driver error.
Think about it--what would change in your
life if you followed your imagination, stayed persistent with it, were willing
to take on systems in your way, and showed full commitment to your dreams?
BY LISA CALHOUN
http://www.inc.com/lisa-calhoun/elon-musks-top-4-entrepreneurial-traits.html?cid=em01020week17a
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