Entrepreneurial Analysis: Elon Musk's Tesla and SpaceX Ventures

This report critically evaluates Elon Musk's entrepreneurial qualities, focusing on his ventures in Tesla and SpaceX. It begins by identifying key personal attributes like willingness to learn, assertiveness, and creativity that have enabled Musk to seize business opportunities. The report then explores the entrepreneurial challenges SpaceX faces, particularly with the Starship project and the vision of a self-sustainable city on Mars, including budget constraints, self-doubt, and delegation issues. Finally, it assesses Musk's entrepreneurial performance and shortcomings during his investment in Tesla, highlighting his innovative contributions to the electric vehicle industry while also acknowledging production setbacks and the importance of effective leadership. The report concludes by summarizing Musk's entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the importance of personal qualities and addressing the challenges and achievements of his ventures. This report provides insights into Musk's approach to business and innovation.

INNOVATION AND
ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Critical evaluation of personal qualities that make Elon Musk a renowned entrepreneur to
attain appropriate business opportunities ...................................................................................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................2
Critical discussion on entrepreneurial challenges that Space X venture of Elon Musk will face
with launch of starship and his vision to create self-sustainable city on Mars...........................2
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................3
Critical evaluation of entrepreneurial performance and shortcomings of Elon Musk during his
investment in Tesla venture........................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
An entrepreneur is defined as an individual which operates and organises one or more
than one business by taking financial risks so that high advantage and profits in business can be
gained. Entrepreneur is a person in charge and a leader which inspires or guide their team to
work in a productive manner. Innovation is referred as the introduction of a new product or
service by a company so that they can provide unique services to their customers (Etzkowitz and
Zhou, 2017). This assignment report is based on Elon Musk which is a US based technological
entrepreneur. Engineer and investor. This project is going to cover about those personal qualities
which help Musk in attaining business opportunities along with challenges which Space X
venture can face due to entrepreneurship. At last, shortcoming and entrepreneurial performance
of Elon Musk while investing in Tesla will be discussed to acknowledge his true working
potential.
TASK 1
Critical evaluation of personal qualities that make Elon Musk a renowned entrepreneur to attain
appropriate business opportunities
Elon Musk is a South African born entrepreneur and a business identity which is
considered as one of the richest person around globe. Musk has established X.com ( PayPal ) in
1999, Space X in the year of 2002 and TESLA Motors in 2003. All of these businesses are
highly successful and shows the true potential of Musk as an entrepreneur (Naranjo-Valencia
And et. al., 2018). There are different personal qualities in Elon Musk which differentiate him
from other individuals and benefits Musk in grabbing business opportunities in a proper manner.
These businesses opportunities are mentioned below:
 Willingness to learn: There are many individuals which feels that a person is needed to
learn until they establish their career but it is not the actual case. Learning new concepts
is a life long procedure. This learning quality is available in Elon Musk due to which he
always remain updated about changing technology and ways to further enhance business
industry. This helps Musk in getting all the business opportunities in the creation of e-
mail payment as PayPal, SolarCity, neurotechnology, Space X etc. If Musk will not have
willingness to learn, it will not be possible for him to carry-out modifications in existing
1

business. This can reduce business opportunities for the businesses managed by him
(Wich and Magee, 2019).
 Assertiveness and confidence: This is the main quality which must be incorporated by
an entrepreneur to achieve high success in business. Along with listening, an entrepreneur
is needed to assert their own beliefs and opinions during a conversation. It will helps in
building high confidence (Wagner, 2017). Musk has this personal quality due to which
he knows in which situation he has to denied a business deal. This benefits him in gaining
only those opportunities which are beneficial for business. If Musk will not have
confidence and assertiveness to share their opinions, his business will not be able to
achieve success and growth.
 Creativity: Other than confidence and willingness to learn, an individual requires
creativity to became an entrepreneur. Creativity benefits in innovating new concepts and
things. Without creativity an individual can not perform new experiments and business
opportunities will not be attained properly. This quality is present in Musk due to which
he is capable to carrying out innovation in the fields of car and rockets by inventing
electric cars under the brand name Tesla and Space X respectively.
TASK 2
Critical discussion on entrepreneurial challenges that Space X venture of Elon Musk will face
with launch of starship and his vision to create self-sustainable city on Mars
Space X starship is a spacecraft and second level of reusable launch vehicle which is
formulated by Space X organisation founded by Elon Musk. Starship is basically a passenger and
cargo carrying spacecraft. There are some entrepreneurial challenges and hardships which can be
faced by launching of Starship and creating a self-sustainable city at Mars. These entrepreneurial
challenges can fail these projects due to which Space X will face major loss of revenues and
profits (Lounsbury and et. al., 2019). Main challenges related with entrepreneurship of Elon
Musk via Starship and self-sustainable city on Mars project are discussed below:
 Strapped budget: Even tough an organisation has sufficient cash flow, there are some
situations in which budget of a company gets disrupted. In that situation, existing projects
of company can face heavy loss and leads to failure. Taking a rocket to Mars or
developing a city there are nest to impossible tasks. With the presence of passion and
2

critical thinking, Musk is working on this project and these projects needs unlimited
capital. Due to inappropriate budget maintenance by Musk, effectiveness of these
projects can suffer (Zhou, 2015).
 Self-doubt: Another entrepreneurial challenge which can be faced by Space X during
there project is Self-doubt. Designing a prototype of spaceship or planning the
construction of city on Mars is very complex tasks. Due to which, while innovating new
concepts and ideas to accomplish work, Musk can face self-doubt which will leads to low
working morale. Having self doubt while performing work can impact ventures of Space
X in negative manner (Kirschbaum, 2016).
 Delegating tasks: All the roles and responsibilities related to space X venture is on Elon
Musk and it is the duty of Musk to delegate task to right people so that all the work can
be carried out in an effective manner. Due to high workload, in some situation if work
will be delegated to wrong person, this will leads to failure of Space X venture. This
entrepreneurial challenge can be overcomes by giving proper consideration during task
delegation (González-Pernía, Jung and Peña, 2015).
TASK 3
Critical evaluation of entrepreneurial performance and shortcomings of Elon Musk during his
investment in Tesla venture
Musk is one of the founder, product architect and CEO of Tesla Motors which is founded
in 2003. vision of Mush while founding this company is to produce affordable, mass-market
electric cars, solar roofs and battery products. Entrepreneurial performance of Elon Musk during
investment in Tesla is very good and appreciable. With the help of entrepreneurial qualities like
creativity, passion, confidence, critical thinking etc. company of Musk has changed the face of
car industry by introduction of electric vehicle (Pisarchik, Maksimenko and Hramov, 2019).
Musk has invested around 70 Million dollars of personal funds in Tesla and became his biggest
stakeholder. Due to the right guidance and leadership of Musk as an entrepreneur, this firm has
achieved Global Green Product Design in 2006. Passion and creativity of Elon Musk helps the
firm in introducing new concepts which were capable of reducing the dependence of people on
3

traditional cars. Without these entrepreneurial skills and qualities, it was impossible for Musk to
introduce innovative electric cars and organisation may have faced business failure.
There are some shortcomings which are faced by Musk as a investor in Tesla Motors.
Due to incorrect calculation of co-founders, price of Roadster Model of Tesla cars went up to
double. Due to this, production stops until 2008. This situation arise due to too many ideas but an
unrealistic optimism due to which confusion arise and overall price of car increases (Vance and
Sanders, 2015). Also, Musk is so visionary due to which his team while producing electric cars
sometimes lags behind in reaching his working phase. Due to this, company has faced major
setback. In 2008, Musk has studied the issues behind this misshapenness and eliminate all the
employees which were ineffective in production. By initiating realistic ideas and giving proper
guidance to employees, this hardship faced by Tesla is overcomes properly (Roach, 2017).
CONCLUSION
As per this given report, it has been summarised that there are some personal qualities
like creativity, learning willingness and confidences which helps an entrepreneur in grabbing
right opportunities in business. Main entrepreneurial challenges which are faced by Space X
venture are inappropriate budget, wrong delegation of work and self doubt. While investing in
business of Tesla, Musk faces shortcomings like giving right direction to employees etc. Also,
entrepreneurial performance of Musk during Tesla investment is appreciable and productive due
to which concerned firm is able to gain high success and able to overcome all odds.
4

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Etzkowitz, H. and Zhou, C., 2017. The triple helix: University–industry–government innovation
and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Naranjo-Valencia, J. C. And et. al., 2018. Entrepreneurship and innovation: Evidence in
colombian SMEs. In Handbook of Research on Intrapreneurship and Organizational
Sustainability in SMEs (pp. 294-316). IGI Global.
Wagner, M., 2017. Entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability. Routledge.
Lounsbury, M. and et. al., 2019. Culture, innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovation. 21(1).
pp.1-12.
Zhou, J., 2015. The Oxford handbook of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Oxford
University Press.
González-Pernía, J. L., Jung, A. and Peña, I., 2015. Innovation-driven entrepreneurship in
developing economies. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development. 27(9-10). pp.555-
573.
Pisarchik, A. N., Maksimenko, V. A. and Hramov, A. E., 2019. From Novel Technology to
Novel Applications: Comment on “An Integrated Brain-Machine Interface Platform
With Thousands of Channels” by Elon Musk and Neuralink. Journal of medical Internet
research. 21(10). p.e16356.
Vance, A. and Sanders, F., 2015. Elon Musk. HarperCollins.
Roach, C. R., 2017. Simply Electrifying: The Technology that Transformed the World, from
Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk. Benbella Books.
Wich, S. and Magee, S., 2019. Judge Finds Tweet From Tesla CEO Elon Musk Violated Labor
Law. Management.7.
Kirschbaum, E., 2016. German automakers who once laughed off Elon Musk are now starting to
worry. Los Angeles Times.
Muegge, S. and Reid, E., 2019. Elon Musk and SpaceX: A Case Study of Entrepreneuring as
Emancipation. Technology Innovation Management Review. 9(8).
McCurdy, H. E., 2019. SpaceX: Leveraging Government Support to Raise Private Capital.
In Financing the New Space Industry (pp. 45-55). Palgrave Pivot, Cham.
5