Entrepreneurial Performance: An Analysis of Elon Musk's Ventures

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Elon Musk's entrepreneurial journey, evaluating his key qualities, challenges, and overall performance. The report begins by identifying and assessing three crucial qualities that have enabled Musk to grasp business opportunities throughout his career: creativity, hard work, and risk-taking. It then delves into three significant entrepreneurial challenges he has faced, including weak profitability, the oversized capital requirements of his ventures, and civil space safety concerns. Finally, the report evaluates Musk's entrepreneurial performance, specifically focusing on his investments in Tesla Motors and the shortcomings he has encountered. The analysis highlights Musk's strategic decisions, the challenges faced by his companies, and his approach to overcoming obstacles. The report draws on various sources to provide a comprehensive overview of Musk's entrepreneurial endeavors and their impact.

Innovation and
Entrepreneurship

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Evaluating 3 main qualities that needs to be adopted by entrepreneur in grasping business
opportunities that is been presented for his entire life.................................................................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................2
Explaining 3 entrepreneurial challenges .....................................................................................2
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................3
Evaluating entrepreneurial performance and if any shortcomings made by him in relation to
his investment .............................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
TASK 1
Evaluating 3 main qualities that needs to be adopted by entrepreneur in grasping business
opportunities that is been presented for his entire life.
Creativity- Elon Musk as an entrepreneur has been seen as highly creative because he has
constantly seek for revising a design by trimming a size, changing heat shield and in adjusting
shape of fins. This quality acts as the main factor for Elon Musk in grasping new business
opportunities that is been presented for throughout the life. He had come up many new ideas for
developing new model as per the changing world in respect of making the alteration in the model
of rocket and had also come up with the new models (Wang and Gloor, 2018). For example-
Tesla had not only produced electric cars but also generated a public awareness for their cars
through Tesla showrooms across the several countries and Space X do not only had a primary
objective of the rocket propulsions in development of their own rocket architecture.
Hard worker- He is been seen as the hard working person, working for majorly 100
hours per week and has always been productive for many years. Elon musk might considered as
hardest working employee of an organization in terms of setting standards for colleagues in
following and executing the task as per the set strategies and the standards. Since a field of the
work lies with the radius of his interest so he seems to be very much energetic and enjoys each
moment when it had come to the point of learning and an implementation (Rimmer, 2018). For
instance- He seek for his critics and had tried hard in conversing along with them. It is the habit
of the self-reflection at the regular and the considerable periods is considered as pivotal for an
entrepreneur or the firm for attaining a success in long period.
Risk taker- In founding start-up business great deal of an uncertainty and the risk is been
faced. From the study , it has been reflected that after the period of 10 years in respect of being in
the business, 96% of start-ups get failed (Moss and Amadio, 2019). As per the statistics , Musk
had faced same odds at the time when he makes decision in leaving a comfortable life fro
starting a risky and an uncertain business enterprise. For example- Elon Musk left with his PHD
program at the Stanford University in finding an entity named as Zip 2 along with his brother
during the year 1995. Later on, company was been sold to the Compaq computers, that profited
Musk bit over a $ 20 million. Following with this, Elon musk had taken a great risk by making
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investment of million dollars in founding company called as X.com, stated as one of world's
leading online banks.
TASK 2
Explaining 3 entrepreneurial challenges
Weak profitability of enterprise- Media coverage of murky debt by SpaceX for the last
month reveals that privately held companies generated about $2.5 billion in terms of the
revenues on an annual basis and in 12 months, it had produced for $270 million in respect of its
earnings before taxes, amortization, depreciation and interest. On the other hand, a Bloomberg
account of placing debt noted that an enterprise involved a pre-payment by the customers within
its earnings computation whereas excluding some of the research expenditures (Lang, Handley
and Jablokow, 2018). Without these adjustments, it has been said that a corporate would
sustained a resulted loss. SpaceX's strategy had been in dominating launch market by providing
lower prices in comparison to its competitor. Cut rate prices indicates thin margins, after
factoring in a vertical integration of Musk's business strategy.
Oversized requirement of capital- Going to the Mars is counted as expensive because it
needs all sorts of the costly equipment that does not exist currently, beginning with the big
successor to the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. SpaceX was been hoping that an Air force would
enable in footing bill for the purpose of developing its starship that is super heavy, but an
outcome of recent launch of military competition would appeared to be precluded. Therefore,
SpaceX will have to generate necessary funding internally or in seeking financing from external
sources (Chen and Perez, 2018). The company is been embarked on the planet to the orbit 7500
small satellites within constellation capable of facilitating a broadband online service on the
earth. On one day, this may offer big opportunities in terms of revenue to SpaceX outside
launching arena but in near terms it demanded for lot of funding for an investment.
Civil space safety- At the time when Elon Musk had smoked a marijuana on the podcast,
NASA administrator went into ballistic and ordered fro a safety review of the two organizations
which have contracted in carrying astronauts towards the International Space Station starting
from the next year. Bridenstine has the reasons to remain nervous as US astronauts had been
hitching rides on the Russian rockets since space shuttle was retired in the year 2011. His time
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period at space agency will firstly be judged and foremost that in what way transition of an
astronauts gone back to the US made launch vehicles and the spacecraft fares.
TASK 3
Evaluating entrepreneurial performance and if any shortcomings made by him in relation to his
investment
As a CEO, Elon Musk had made heavy investments in Tesla Motors and performed his
responsibility efficiently and also faced many shortcomings or challenges. In the years 2009,
Tesla managed in producing across 800 highly performed electric cars as a niche manufacturer
within an industry which churned out the millions of the vehicles. Musk never had intended in
being a niche player after roughly making $180 million as the co-founder of the Paypal, he had
helped in getting Tesla off ground in the year 2004 within making an initial investment
amounting to $6.3 million. Firstly, he developed the high-end, highly performing sports car to
prove that an electric vehicles were cools as well as feasible (Wang and Gloor, 2018). Secondly,
rolling out the luxury sedan which would compete with the high ends companies such as BMW,
Mercedes etc. Thirdly, producing thousands of the low cost electric vehicles for major of the
masses.
During the year 2008, Musk had introduced Roadster, a sports car with two seat and sold
over 1300 models. By the year 2009, government agreed for providing the loan to company of $
465 million through alternative vehicle that funding for launching phase two that is challenging
car industry heading on by the mass producing, Tesla model S, seen as the stylish 4 door sedan
powered by greater than 7000 lithium batteries. By the problem occurred that Musk was not
having a factory and Tesla was been outsourcing majority of its Roadster manufacturing, by
assembling car in the garage beside its showroom situated in Menlo Park, California. Fabrication
on the mass scale was been impossible and Musk required a legitimate facility such as Nummi,
but plant has recently valued at approx $ 1 billion- by way beyond a small start-up that could
afford.
Just 3 years ago, Tesla motors came into a big trouble where inaugural product of
company where $109000 Tesla Roadster was been due to start its production but an internal
audit that is done over summer had revealed that cost in building a car had climbed to $140000.
It was counted as a money loser in before a single unit had delivered. Musk was a lead investor
but not running an enterprise then and was taken aback by state of the affairs. He had been led in
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believing that in manufacturing car, amount would cost to $65000 and had decided in
investigating discrepancy.
At this point of time, Musk and the other investors had sunk for nearly $100 million into
an enterprise and did not have single car in showing it. By the end of the year 2007, Musk
decided in putting another $20 million into the Tesla and he was not ready in conceding defeat as
for him there present more at a stake than only creating a viable organization (Moss and Amadio,
2019). Combustion engine made a world dependent on an oil, resulting in the climatic change,
heightened geopolitical tensions and transferring of wealth to the oil- producing states. Musk
believed that an auto industry had a too much of financial and a psychic investment in engine for
admitting that technology of 19th century had shown its usefulness. Musk believed that effect of
switching to the electrics would found transformative and with combustion engine they had been
largely stuck with the oil in producing the fuel for the purpose of transportation.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Chen, Y. and Perez, Y., 2018. Business model design: lessons learned from Tesla Motors.
In Towards a Sustainable Economy (pp. 53-69). Springer, Cham.
Lang, D., Handley, M. and Jablokow, K., 2018. 2 The competencies of innovation leaders.
In Innovation Leadership(pp. 15-28). Taylor and Francis.
Moss, A. U. and Amadio, J. P., 2019. The Ethical Imperative for Neuro-Entrepreneurs. AJOB
neuroscience. 10(4). pp.205-207.
Rimmer, M., 2018. Elon Musk’s Open Innovation: Tesla, Intellectual Property, and Climate
Change. In Intellectual Property and Clean Energy (pp. 515-551). Springer, Singapore.
Wang, X. and Gloor, P. A., 2018. Wuity as higher cognition combining intuitive and deliberate
judgments for creativity: Analyzing Elon Musk’s way to innovate. In Collaborative
Innovation Networks (pp. 165-182). Springer, Cham.
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