ENT 6800 Assignment: Elon Musk's Entrepreneurial Ventures Analysis

This report delves into the entrepreneurial endeavors of Elon Musk, examining his personal qualities that have contributed to his success. It critically analyzes the challenges faced by SpaceX, particularly in the Starship project, including financial requirements, passenger safety, and military access. Furthermore, the report investigates Elon Musk's entrepreneurial performance in Tesla, assessing the impact of his inspirational story, strategic visions, and employee motivation. The analysis provides insights into the innovative approaches, current position, and future target markets of Tesla, highlighting Musk's influence on the company's growth and performance. The report utilizes research and critical analysis to evaluate Musk's impact on the automotive industry.

Innovation and
Entrepreneurship

TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Personal Qualities of Elon Musk ................................................................................................1
Entrepreneurial Challenges faced by Elon Musk for “Starship launch” project of Space x........3
Entrepreneurial performance of Elon Musk in TESLA...............................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurship can be said as the activity for setting up a business or multiple
businesses by taking financial risks for gaining profit. One of the role models of today's
generation as an entrepreneur is Elon Musk. This project will discuss the different personal
qualities of Elon Musk explaining how business opportunities where grabbed by Elon Musk
business life. Starship project of SpaceX organization founded by Elon Musk will be discussed
in this project stating the difficulties and challenges which are going to face by Elon Musk on his
mission of settling humans on Mars. With consideration to Elon Musk's life and achievement this
project will evaluate the entrepreneurial performances of Elon Musk in Tesla.
MAIN BODY
Personal Qualities of Elon Musk
Elon Musk has been considered as a legend in the eyes of today's generation. Elon Musk
who uplifted himself as a South African businessman, Engineer and investor. Elon Musk has
achieved many things in life. He is the founder and CEO of many organizations such as SpaceX,
Tesla Inc. and Neuralink. In 2018, he was declared the richest person of the world with a total
net worth of $20.8 billion (Fadilah, 2018).
His success is the reflection of his personal characteristics. The main reason he got such
opportunities was because of his personal attributes. Elon Musk has said many inspirational
things in his interviews. He once said,” When something is important enough, you do it even if
the odds are not in your favour”. Some of his personal qualities are as follows,
Hard Work :
There is no denying how hard-working an individual can be who is the richest person
living. He shows great determination by working almost 100 hours a week. This has been the
reason for his productivity for many years. Hard-work without goals or aims is not useful, Elon
musk has set standards in his companies by being the hardest working individual. This gives his
employees motivation to reach the desired goals. For someone who has been so hard-working for
so many years new opportunities are easy to be grabbed and used as steps for future
development. Elon Musk has been recruiting individuals which has shown hard work and
specialized traits for him job profiles (Thompson , 2020). Hard work is only useful when it is
done in the righ way with the right knowledge. Elon Musk has show great skill of excellence
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while choosing his path in which he works. Selection of a project is as important as the hard
work shown in it.
Self Believe and Founding team :
Elon Musk has show great self believe, he does not show any kind of hesitation for taking
big risk if he has general awareness of the result. Such an ability for believing in himself gives
him the required courage necessary for achieving success which are beyond imagination. It is
only possible for an individual to build successful team if the team builder has faith in their own
capabilities. Team members are highly influenced with such strong belief shown by their leader.
Opportunities present themselves without showing any hints or clues. For grabbing such
opportunities an individual should be prepared not just by himself but also should have an active
and hard-working team which can be productive when they are absolutely needed. Elon Musk
and his team has shown such qualities in the past few years showing results which are the
reflection of the self belief of Elon Musk and his mind-blowing quality of selecting the best
individuals for his team. Elon Musk has been seen selecting those individuals which are going
with practical knowledge rather than those with lot of degrees. According to him knowledge
come from experience not degree (Yampolskiy, 2019). This type of out of the world thinking has
got him where he is right now. When an entrepreneur believes in his team the performance of
that team automatically increases, Elon Musk is a great example for this situation his success
comes with belief and motivation which he tries to pass on to his employees.
Research and Development :
For achieving things so great in life Elon Musk needed to bring innovation in his
thoughts and level of understanding. Thinking life every other person would have led him to no
success He has used his knowledge to impact the practical life with constant study of innovative
ideas. His ways of reaching innovative idea has been resembling the tradition approach of
research and development. All these things put together has resulted amazing out of the world
inventions. Tesla Motors has become extra ordinary company of in vehicle market. This
company uses video testimonials guided by Elon Musk to reach new goals in the company. Tesla
have developed with new and more effective technologies. Tesla has proved to be the first
electric car available to the customers. Elon Musk in his starting years was seen experimenting a
lot with his friends. This trait of him has made him achieve things which is not easy for any
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human being. Quality of researching comes from extreme determination of an individual
(Goldthwaite, 2019).
Entrepreneurial Challenges faced by Elon Musk for “Starship launch” project of Space x
Space X is commercial space company founded by Elon Musk. The main aims of Space
X was to prove that travelling to space is not as expensive as it previously was, and also has
proved that rockets are reusable susses fully with proper examples. Next project of Elon Musk
and Space X is to make humans travel to Mars and develop a colony on that planet. Mars is not
yet suitable for living because of its extreme environmental conditions. This is going to be real
challenge. Apart from this Elon Musk will have to face some Entrepreneurial challenge for the
launch of Starship. Those challenges are,
Huge capital Requirements :
Travelling to the space is already very expensive it requires a lot of expensive equipments
. And for building a space ship which will carry human to Mars, will be so costly that numbers
aren't enough to describe the magnitude of such capital. Some equipments and technology
required to reach Mars are still not available this is going to be a prediction which Elon Musk has
to make. The capital requirement of this project will not be easy as this project will not show any
estimation of profit. This is a mission in life of Elon Musk which will prove the most difficult of
all the missions. There are no specific sources of investment of Starship apart from the company
Space X owned by Elon Musk the richest man on earth. Despite all the dreams of this mission
there is always the risk of failure involved in this project due to which financial institutions also
find it hard to provide loan to Space X. Starship project still has doubts about its profitability, A
project which has no real aim for earning any revenue finding capital for that project is very
hard. Colonization of in Mars is considered to be a one way trip for any human. It will be almost
impossible to gather enough fuel to make a trip back to earth. Such a project will require skilful
individuals who will be able to living out of such extreme conditions on Mars. Persuading
someone to go one a mission like this might require lot of compensation. Elon Musk believes
that nothing is impossible, and he is going to make this impossible mission possible, and no
value is going to stand between him and success (Inocente, 2020).
Safety of passengers :
Elon Musk has been accused of such unrealistic ideas by many people. One of the reason
for this has been regarding the safety of the passengers which is a big issue for the company and
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Elon Musk. Travelling to Mars takes about 6 months which itself is very long time and will
require a lot of resources for keeping passengers. Reaching Mars the trouble won't end the
company will require to facilitate the passenger with necessary things like food, shelter and
water. Normally these things are enough but on Mars atmosphere is not suitable for humans thus
the company will have to build such advance technologies in a short period for the humans to
live successfully. All these plans are just imagination which are put together by the company. In
an almost impossible mission risk of lives is very high which is an important issue for Elon
Musk. Even a single mistake can prove in devastation and may lead to the death of space
passengers. Elon Musk will be the centre of attention and the main accuse if this project has any
casualties. Water will be the biggest issue when it comes to Mars. Although scientist believe
Mars contain water it will not be easy for anyone to go out there and fetch it. The level of hard
work which Elon Musk and his team has to put into this project will be beyond imagination. Life
is the most important thing no project or mission is more important than life itself (Yauney,
2018).
Military Access :
Elon Musk has been trying his best to achieve a military launch certification of Space X.
Which means that US Military has not accepted the Rockets and machine designs build by Space
X. Result of which Space X does not get any funding for development of their new launch or
vehicle. Starship mission also requires viability of nation security from the launch business
segment. Gaining the consent of national security will be a big challenge in the success of
starship. Elon Musk's team need to prove themselves in all the area including political,
environmental, ethical and also in the eyes of the security. Without the permissions of Military
this project does not have a future. It may take time but Elon Musk believes he will make sure
that this project is successful overcoming every hindrance in his path.
Entrepreneurial performance of Elon Musk in TESLA
Elon Musk has been responsible for the success of TESLA. He himself admitted about
funding the company by his own when there was immense pressure from other investors of
TESLA (Kim, 2020). Although this broke regulations of Public limited companies and thus
TESLA and Elon Musk were fined by 20 million each still it was a phenomenal gesture of
Entrepreneurship from Elon Musk. This was nothing compared to what Elon Musk owns
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(Dawson, 2021). For him it was like paying for parking. Tesla's performance is effected by Elon
Musk's following entrepreneurial qualities,
Elon Musk's inspirational story :
Along with being the CEO of Tesla Elon Musk has also affected the business
performance of Tesla by his inspirational story which includes how he became a billionaire.
These phenomena have made him very famous and known across the world. This fact of
popularity affects the performance of TE43919SLA as customers which are inspired by Elon
Musk will prefer Tesla over other cars (Park, 2020).
Strategies and visions :
Tesla is still a very young company in comparison to its competitors although with great
support of Elon Musk and his brilliance Tesla is seen growing a lot. Tesla has set strong strategic
goals which are combination of ideas of Elon Musk and his team. Companies are often the
reflection of their CEO's decisions. He has been the engine behind the activities and development
of the Tesla company.
Elon Musk inspires employees :
As an extreme public figure Elon Musk inspires many people. The employees of Elon
Musk are no different. Everyone wants to become like him, this is the reason why employees of
Tesla are inspired by Elon Musk and for becoming like him they put in great efforts in their job.
Working for him gives them incentives of both monetary and inspirational type. Elon Musk
desires more than a 100% effort from his employee. He keeps them motivated with extraordinary
goals and rewards (Bondar, 2018).
Upcoming Failures :
Tesla have been part of some failure in production of their cars. This company has shown
that even working with the richest man doesn't always bring success. That being said Elon Musk
is not a person who gives up on his dreams. He has been key to uplift the company when ever
they faced any failures. This has been because of his spirit of not giving up in extreme conditions
(Manfrida, Pacini and Talluri, 2018).
Elon Musk style of Promotion :
Unlike any other CEO Elon Musk is very active when it comes to promotional activities.
He has used all kinds of platforms like social media, television or even press conferences. Elon
Musk many times used reality TV shows for promoting its business. In some shows Elon Musk
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has demonstrated the different specification of the Tesla cars, which has shocked the world most
of the times.
Extraordinary Ideas :
Elon Musk has build a strategy in which he is often the first individual to come up with
certain technologies which are totally new to the world. Tesla as been the first company to come
up with totally electronic fuel. After, this accomplishment Tesla shocked the world by
introducing auto pilot facilities. These are unbelievable qualities in a car, something can be
expected from someone like Elon Musk only.
These entrepreneurial qualities of Elon Musk are very effective towards his businesses.
Elon Musk has promised the world for delivering such cars in the future which will no longer
require any drivers. That will be totally computerized and will have features that will stop any
kind of accidents before it has taken place. It will not be an easy task for doing something so
extraordinary. Elon Musk says that in future people will be able to call their cars for picking
them up from office via a text message (McCain, 2019).
CONCLUSION
This project concludes that Elon Musk is a great entrepreneur and has influenced his
businesses with his supreme qualities. Tesla a car manufacturing company of which Elon Musk
is a CEO has achieved great things and according to the promises of him will keep on achieving
greater things beyond imaginations. Starship a dream project of Elon Musk which is to send
human to Mars and colonize that planet is going to have major issues and will also affect Elon
Musk. Although, Elon Musk is just a small part of this project of Space X but will be the centre
of attention for all the issue faced. In this project three personal qualities of Elon Musk have been
discussed which he used for grabbing opportunities in his life.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bondar, K., 2018. Challenges and opportunities of industry 4.0-Spanish experience. International
Journal of Innovation, Management and Technology. 9(5). pp.202-209.
Dawson, L., 2021. Future Topics in Space. In The Politics and Perils of Space Exploration (pp.
259-268). Springer, Cham.
Fadilah, M.I., 2018. CULTURAL LAG ON ELON MUSK’S COMPANIES IN ELON MUSK:
TESLA, SPACEX, AND THE QUEST FOR FANTASTIC FUTURE (Doctoral
dissertation, Diponegoro University).
Goldthwaite, C., 2019. Using the Leadership Competency Framework in the Study of Leadership
in Digital Contexts. InCompetencies for Effective Leadership. Emerald Publishing
Limited.
Inocente, D., 2020. Future Space Architecture: Cross-Functional Multidisciplinary Design
aGoldthwaite, C., 2019nd Engineering. InASCEND 2020 (p. 4067).
Kim, H., 2020. Analysis of how Tesla Creating Core Innovation Capability. International Journal
of Business and Management. 15(6).
Manfrida, G., Pacini, L. and Talluri, L., 2018. An upgraded Tesla turbine concept for ORC
applications. Energy. 158. pp.33-40.
McCain, C., 2019. A Strategic Audit of Tesla, Inc.
Park, K.M., 2020. The New Executive: Interconnected Yet Isolated and Uninformed–Leadership
Challenges in the Digital Pandemic Epoch. The Palgrave Handbook of Management History,
pp.1011-1045.
Yampolskiy, R.V., 2019. Personal universes: A solution to the multi-agent value alignment
problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.01851.
Yauney, R.H., 2018. Leadership Development: A Study of Elon Musk. Marriott Student
Review. 2(2). p.4.
Online
Thompson, L., 2020, elon musk spacex [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2018/12/11/five-existential-challenges-
facing-elon-musks-spacex/>.
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