Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Elon Musk's Qualities and Challenges

This document discusses the personal qualities that made Elon Musk a great entrepreneur and the challenges faced by his Space X venture in establishing a self-sustainable city on Mars. It also evaluates Elon Musk's entrepreneurial performance in Tesla.

Innovation and
Entrepreneurship

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................1
Critically evaluate the any three personal qualities that made Elon Musk a great entrepreneur
in order to grasp the business opportunities throughout his lifetime. Provide real examples
from further research..............................................................................................................1
Task2................................................................................................................................................3
Critically discuss three entrepreneurial challenges that Elon Musk's Space X venture will face
with the recent 'Starship' launch and vision in establishing the first self-sustainable city on the
planet Mars. Justify discussion with real examples from industry.........................................3
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................4
Carry out additional research to critically evaluate Elon Musk entrepreneurial performance
and any shortcoming during his investment in one of the below venture : ...........................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
References:.......................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Innovation and entrepreneurship are the two most commonly words used in
contemporary business environment. These terms are sometimes interchangeable on the basis of
their definition, however, they both differ from each other in various aspects. Innovation can be
defined as coming up with a new and unique idea, that can be related with product, services,
methods or even new sources of supply and organisation. On the other hand, Entrepreneurship is
concerned with implementation of valuable innovative ideas into a reality. These are the social
invention or carrying out the business activities in a creative way which have not been done even
before to meet the unaddressed needs of the market. Elon musk is a recognised entrepreneur,
industrial designer and an engineer, born on June, 1971. He is the founder, CEO, CTO and chief
designer of Space X. The report covers different entrepreneurial qualities of Elon musk along
with the future challenges that would come in his journey to success.
Task 1
Critically evaluate the any three personal qualities that made Elon Musk a great entrepreneur in
order to grasp the business opportunities throughout his lifetime. Provide real examples
from further research
Personality traits are defined as the behaviour of an individual towards other, their
attitude in work and personal life, characteristics thoughts and way of thinking (Lounsbury and
et. al., 2019). The personal traits reflects on a success and failure of an individuals or an
organisation. Having extraordinary personality traits like the Elon Musk have takes entrepreneurs
to the new heights of success and growth. Elon Musk is a founder, Chief executive officer and
chief architect of Space-X, and also a co-founder and product designer of Tesla. Elon musk
possess a unique set of qualities and skills that have drive him to be one of the wealthiest person
in world. The major personal traits of Elon Musk is mentioned beneath.
 Innovation, hard work and integrity : Elon musk's ventures are considered as most
innovative and unique in the across the globe. Innovation is derived from creativity and
continuous research and experiments which have enabled Elon musk in introducing
world's most iconic ventures for example Tesla, Elon musk joined Tesla board of
directors as its chairman in the year 2004, with his continuous hard work and integrity
Tesla built and introduced an electric sports car named Tesla Roadster in the year 2008.
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Subsequently, Tesla made further expansion and since then Tesla is growing in terms of
its market share and large customer base. Elon Musk is a hard-working innovator who
devote around 100 hours to work and is known for its productivity (Bhagavatula,
Mudambi and Murmann, 2019). With his hard-working and work ethics, Elon musk have
set the benchmark for other entrepreneurs, making this particular personal trait as a base
for his successful career journey.
 Strong vision and risk tolerance : High level of risk and uncertainty is inherent into the
innovations, entrepreneurship or any business activity. Success of a entrepreneur is
completely based on strong vision and risk bearing capabilities. In the year 2001 Musk
conceived an idea to build a miniature green house on Mars that would help to grow
crops and reawaken the public interest in space. After his three failures, Elon Musk
succeeded in launching a Space X in 2008, it was his perseverance that lead him to the
successful launching. Another challenge Musk faced when he launched X.com, an online
email and financial service company. As Musk was novice and inexperience so he
decided to merge with Confinity to prevent its business operations.
 Preference to stand out from crowd : Elon musk have been putting efforts continuously
to bring up innovation by means of new product launching and making necessary
amendments to their existing product range in order to address the needs and wants of
customer in a unique and creative way leaving a mark and setting a benchmark in a
competitive environment (Cunningham and et. al., 2019). Musk used to share his
knowledge and skills at the base level to make necessary change according to the changes
in a market environment and ensure the execution of the same on the practical level. His
quality to be stand our in a crowd is supported bye a detailed research and development
programmes which in turn increases the performance and profitability of Elon Musk's
exceptional innovations. Tesla reaches at its pinnacle when Elon Musk joined the
company in the year 2004. Another innovation that proves Elon musk's preference to
stand out in a crowd is the Neuralink, which was founded in 2016 with an objective to
integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence. Therefore, the above mentioned
innovations and inventions by Elon musk is proved to be continuous evaluation of one's
strengths and weakness and success of these innovation are the consequences of working
on strength and weakness on a regular basis.
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Task2
Critically discuss three entrepreneurial challenges that Elon Musk's Space X venture will face
with the recent 'Starship' launch and vision in establishing the first self-sustainable city on
the planet Mars. Justify discussion with real examples from industry.
In the year 2001, Musk came up with an idea to build a miniature green house on Mars
which would put efforts to grow crops and awaken the interest of public in space exploration.
Subsequently in the year 2002, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., an aerospace manufacture
and space transportation service company was founded by Elon Musk. The core purpose of
developing the idea was to mitigate the space transportation cost by colonisation of Mars
(Ferraris, Santoro and Pellicelli, 2020). Although Elon Musk was novice with no experience in
the space technology, the company was very unlikely to succeed and despite of the fact and
protests from Musk's friends and families he decided to move ahead and injected somewhere
around $100 million into the business which was his personal savings. Persistence and
confidence of Elon Musk have lead the successful creation of company which is being
recognised as a iconic company and successful story of a business which is a blend of failure,
disruption and triumph, in a world with a manpower of around 9000 employees.
After several attempts space X succeeded in launching the falcon 1 in 2008 which was a
first private liquid-fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit. Space X carry our its business activities in
manufacturing Falcon heavy launch vehicles, rocket engines, Dragon cargo, star link satellite and
crew spacecraft. Space X long term vision is to take the human being on the red planet, Mars and
to build a sustainable city over the planet. Space X is planning to bring human to the planet in
two stage rocket; the upper stage is Starship and the another one is Super Heavy booster which
was known as Big Falcon Rocket or BFR which was next generation launch vehicle developed in
the year 2017 to support all the Space X launch service provider capabilities. Space X is working
continuously to minimize the several things that would need to do so as to achieve that first
mission to Mars (Pyka, Kudic and Müller 2019). One of the minimization involves the huge
payload capacity. Once refuelled in low-earth orbit, Starship have the capacity to take load of
100 tons to the Mars. There are also several other challenges that would hinder the successful
mission of the Space X which needs to be consider and prepare a strategies in accordance with
these variables.
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 In order to reduce the complexity of the mission to red planet, Space X is making
continuous efforts to the better utilisation of the resource to make the mission more cost
effective. One of the major key challenges that a company face is to find the way back to
the earth axis from red planet (Smith and et. al., 2020). This is the significant area where
the Space X is seeking a n alliance with the other parters to make the mission cost
effective and successful. For this purpose Company have also conducted a various
seminars and conference to solicit advice and support in a relevant area. Another areas in
which the company is seeking a partnership is power, habitats, food storage, science etc.
 One of the major challenge that Space X address is the need of energy power and it has
been estimated that for the survival during the course of 500 days would require a energy
of 1 megawatt. For the source of such energy power, nuclear energy is recommended
however further development is required to meet the energy requirements of Space X.
Experts suggested that Solar power is ideal for the production of such energy and Space
X has recently launched 60 Starling Satellites which have carried a lots of solar panel but
the sum of that would only produce 120KW and apart from this the environment for
solar panels is not ideal at Mars and it's far away from the planet sun (Berger and et. al.,
2019). Furthermore there are regular dust storms, long day night temperature cycles and
optimal pointing direction could be biggest challenge for Space X.
Task 3
Carry out additional research to critically evaluate Elon Musk entrepreneurial performance and
any shortcoming during his investment in one of the below venture :
 Tesla : the electric cars, solar panels, and energy solution for homes and companies.
Company overview
Tesla Inc. was founded in the year July 2003, as Tesla Motors, by the name of its
inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla as a tribute to him. Elon musk succeeded and took
the charge in Tesla as a Chief executive officer since the year 2008 till present through his
financial contribution in the company. Tesla was formed with a unique and innovative purpose
of accelerate the sustainable energy and transports by the means of electric vehicles and solar
power in houses and commercial properties (Galindo-Martín, Méndez-Picazo and Castaño-
Martínez, 2019). Tesla' s current offerings include electric cars, battery energy storage from
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home to at the scale of grid level, solar panels for both domestic and commercial purpose, solar
roof tiles and other sustainable products and services. Tesla is recognised as one of the largest
supplier of battery energy storage systems and ranked as the world's best selling plug-in battery
and manufacture of passenger electric battery car with a share of approximately 16% of the plug-
in segment and 23% of the electric car battery as per the recent report of 2020. Tesla with their
stated mission and vision initiated the production of first car model in 2009 named Roadster
(Sharma, 2019). Tesla had manufactured high volume of “Model 3” sedan car in 2017 which is
the world's all time best-selling plug-in electric car with more than 800,000 units sold till the
time December 2020.
Current position or assets
Tesla motors is unique and creative in its product offering as it not only offers the electric
cars but also new technology driven products such as plug-in batteries, electric car batteries,
solar panel and solar roof tiles. Tesla have been focusing majorly on the technological aspects to
remain competitive in a market environment. Tesla not only dominates the electric-cars market
but also excels in providing necessary infrastructure to support the functioning of these cars
such as developing a network of supercharges and service stations for rapid charging of vehicles.
As soon as the company announced that it would come up with a new electric pickup truck,
Tesla received a pre booking orders up to 150,000 units despite of any promotional campaign or
endorsements. The crafting of such vehicles will use the same quality of steel as the Space X
uses in its starship rocket (Pereira, 2019). Apart from this Tesla have also announced to
manufacture 500,000 units of its Model 3 and Model Y which will require a additional workforce
of 10,000 employees.
Impacts Of Tesla
As the Tesla's product range is designed and developed by considering the deteriorating
impact vehicles and other source of energy have on an environment. Tesla is dealing in
sustainable and energy efficient products which includes solar power panels for home and
commercial purpose, solar roof tiles, plug in battery, electric car batteries and space crafts. Due
the Elon Musk innovations Tesla have become an iconic brand which is dealing completely in
sustainable products and services. The contribution of Tesla towards safeguarding an
environment is done in several ways :
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 Reducing carbon emission : It has been argued whether the Electrical vehicles are
more sustainable than other combustible engines (Zakieva and et. al., 2019). Tesla's
innovative and customised products, to deal with the environmental issues, are designed
with the purpose of promoting zero-emission transport and energy products which helps
to maintain a healthy environment with least damage to it (Zheng and Du, 2020).
 Energy efficient : Tesla continuously works for reducing the carbon foot prints by their
electrical vehicles which are highly energy efficient ans contribute towards protecting
the environment and helps in reducing cost to the consumer.
 Recycling of battery : Tesla's batteries are designed and known for its durability. They
are designed keeping in mind the life duration of electrical cars. Electrical cars are worn
out and exhausted after the usage of 200,00 miles. The lithium-ion battery of Tesla are
not considered as scrap and can be used further after being recycled. The scrapped
batteries does not go to the landfills thus contribute in conserving the environment.
 Pollution kills : Due to the rapid growth in population and as a consequences use of
combustible vehicles are increasing which leads to increase in pollution. The internal
combustible engines emit poisonous gases around us which can lead to the premature
deaths (Hsieh and Wu, 2019). Tesla's EV models not only help in reducing the carbon
footprints but also helps in reduce air pollution.
Innovation approaches and future target market
Tesla's business activities are concerned with the innovation and make continuous efforts
to come up with a new and creative ideas to meet up the needs and demands of customer by
keeping in mind the vision and mission of a company. Tesla have been dealing in lithium-ion
batteries and was the first to auto maker to use the batteries.
 As per the recent report Tesla have made announcement to come up with the next
generation of batteries that will have a long life than the previous one and will reduce
cost of Tesla's vehicle. Apart from this Tesla's innovation is based on continuous
advancement of technology which gives Tesla a competitive edge over others.
 Autopilot was first introduced by Tesla which is drives assistance system which keeps
eye on driver's activity and notify when needed (Piñeiro-Chousa and et. al., 2020). Tesla
have recently updated a Autopilot mode which will recognise the stop points and will
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stop the car accordingly. Apart from this the new feature also give direction to stop at
traffic lights and slow down automatically when a car approaches towards traffic lights.
 Full self driving is the another innovation which will be brought up by Tesla in upcoming
year. However the company conceived the idea of Full self-driving in the year 2016 and
planned to demonstrate it by the end of 2017 (Guerrero and Urbano, 2019). Tesla is
working in this aspect to improve the technology and to make a car more compatible with
the public roads with heavy traffic.
CONCLUSION
From the above stated information it has been derived that innovation plays a crucial role
in shaping the career of entrepreneurs. Innovation involves creative and unique thinking that is
the way to address needs and demands of the customers in a exceptional way that have not been
existed before. Success of entrepreneur is utterly based on the entrepreneur skills and personal
quality traits that help in shaping the career path of the entrepreneur which is proved with the
above mentioned example. Innovations and entrepreneurship are sometimes interchangeable with
their meaning however they differ in their objectives. Innovation is conceiving of an idea
whereas entrepreneurship is based on finding the valuable ideas and bringing those into reality.
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References:
Books and Journals
Berger, E.S., and et. al., 2019. Digital or not–The future of entrepreneurship and innovation:
Introduction to the special issue.
Bhagavatula, S., Mudambi, R. and Murmann, J.P., 2019. Innovation and entrepreneurship in
India: An overview. Management and Organization Review, 15(3), pp.467-493.
Cunningham, J.A., and et. al., 2019. The impact of university focused technology transfer
policies on regional innovation and entrepreneurship. The Journal of Technology
Transfer, 44(5), pp.1451-1475.
Ferraris, A., Santoro, G. and Pellicelli, A.C., 2020. “Openness” of public governments in smart
cities: removing the barriers for innovation and entrepreneurship. International
Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, pp.1-22.
Galindo-Martín, M.A., Méndez-Picazo, M.T. and Castaño-Martínez, M.S., 2019. The role of
innovation and institutions in entrepreneurship and economic growth in two groups of
countries. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research.
Guerrero, M. and Urbano, D., 2019. A research agenda for entrepreneurship and innovation: the
role of entrepreneurial universities. In A Research Agenda for Entrepreneurship and
Innovation. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Hsieh, Y.J. and Wu, Y.J., 2019. Entrepreneurship through the platform strategy in the digital era:
Insights and research opportunities. Computers in Human Behavior. 95. pp.315-323.
Lounsbury, M.,and et. al., 2019. Culture, innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovation. 21(1).
pp.1-12.
Pereira, E.T., 2019. Innovation and Entrepreneurship During Economic Crises. In Handbook of
Research on Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Internationalization (pp. 258-281). IGI
Global.
Piñeiro-Chousa, J., and et. al., 2020. Innovation, entrepreneurship and knowledge in the business
scientific field: Mapping the research front. Journal of Business Research. 115. pp.475-
485.
Pyka, A., Kudic, M. and Müller, M., 2019. Systemic interventions in regional innovation
systems: Entrepreneurship, knowledge accumulation and regional innovation. Regional
Studies. 53(9). pp.1321-1332.
Sharma, G., 2019. Innovation and entrepreneurship research in India from 2000 to 2018: a
bibliometric survey. Journal of Management Development.
Smith, E., and et. al., 2020. Rebooting late-life mental health innovation and entrepreneurship
with convergence science. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 28(6).
pp.591-596.
Zakieva, R.R., and et. al., 2019. The significance of studying legal protection of rights on
innovative creations: The case of entrepreneurship education. Journal of
Entrepreneurship Education. 22(3). pp.1-11.
Zheng, S. and Du, R., 2020. How does urban agglomeration integration promote
entrepreneurship in China? Evidence from regional human capital spillovers and market
integration. Cities. 97. p.102529.
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