Entrepreneurship Assessment: Analyzing Tesla and Elon Musk's Success

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Tesla's entrepreneurial journey, with a specific focus on the leadership of Elon Musk. It begins by defining entrepreneurship and highlighting its role in innovation and economic development, using Tesla as a case study. The report examines the key traits of entrepreneurs, such as hard work, risk tolerance, and visionary thinking, as exemplified by Elon Musk. It explores the development of Tesla's various models, including the Roadster, Model S, and Model 3, emphasizing the role of innovation in meeting customer needs and achieving market competitiveness. The report also discusses the concept of an entrepreneurial organization, highlighting the importance of employee input, effective leadership, and a strong organizational culture. It analyzes Tesla's organizational structure and how Elon Musk, as CEO, fosters innovation and drives the company's vision. The report concludes by examining the challenges Tesla faces and the role of entrepreneurship in driving organizational growth and economic impact. The report highlights the importance of innovation for Tesla's success and the company's contribution to society, particularly in the context of electric vehicles. The report also discusses the impact of external factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, on Tesla's operations.

Entrepreneurship Assessment

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
A. About the Entrepreneur................................................................................................3
B. About the Entrepreneurial Organisation:......................................................................5
C. About Contribution to the Economy and Society:.......................................................7
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurship is defined as the act of initiating a business for the purpose of earning
profits. Modern entrepreneurship is associated with transforming problem into solution by
offering innovative ideas and products so as to maintain status quo in daily life. This is regarded
as an act of investment and producing opportunities for business development.
Entrepreneurship is a way in which transformation takes place in which jobs are made in
immense manner and enormous employments are provided as well (Storey, D.J. ed., 2016).
Entrepreneurship is laced with high degree of innovation in which risk is borne by entrepreneur
for the major purpose to make profit and providing employment to people. This report is
associated with understanding concepts of entrepreneurship in the background of Tesla. Tesla is
an electronic vehicle manufacturing company which was founded by Elon Musk a prominent
entrepreneur. The company was founded in the year of 2003 and in current time Tesla is having
world’s most advanced automotive plants along with 5.3 million square feet of manufacturing
area. This report includes personality traits of Elon Musk and his journey that how he
successfully dealt with problems and converted them into opportunities in order to earn profits.
Along with this the report explains role of Tesla and Elon Musk in enhancing society and
economies of various nations. In the last part of the report various issues are discussed which
are faced by Tesla due to global pandemic COVID-19. Along with this role of entrepreneur in
order to inhale growth of the organisation are also enlightened.
MAIN BODY
A. About the Entrepreneur
The entrepreneurs are associated with numerous traits which differentiates them from other
people. This is the major reason that entrepreneurs are successful as they think different and act
differently. On the other hand entrepreneurs are having a different vision to deal with problems
and measure success. Same way Elon Musk had various traits due to which he attained success
in a very short run of time. Hard work and work ethics: Entrepreneurs are hard workers and
they set standards for their followers. On the other hand successful entrepreneurs maintain
proper working ethics within workplace so that to encourage appropriate working and to boost

morale of them as well. Elon Musk is having trait to deal with innovation and he is hard
working enough to manage his entire task in prominent manner (Coduras, Saiz-Alvarez and
Ruiz, 2016). He is working for more than 100 hours in a week which enhances overall
productivity of the organisation. Strong risk tolerance: Entrepreneurs are risk taker as at the
time of initial funding and venture starting uncertainty and risks are existed which is being
undertaken by an entrepreneur in order to become successful. Elon Musk has faced higher risk
in his tenure of venture initiation such as he dropped his PhD program at Stanford University in
order to start venture which was a riskier decision. Besides this Elon Musk always kept on
positive energy due to which he remained optimistic throughout his struggling tenure. His
inspiration and certain behaviour lead him to persist even in bad situation. During venture
initiation he faced so many difficulties but through his challenging and patience behaviour he
managed those situations and emerged as a founder of a multinational manufacturing concern.
On the other hand entrepreneurs are having decisiveness in their ideas which could lead them to
stay aligned to their major objective and lead the world. In this context Elon musk took decision
regarding initiating their business of manufacturing of electric vehicles which are high in
technology and performance. Dedication of Elon Musk leads him to provide successful
business identity to their business and attaining market edge as well.
Entrepreneurs are the person who finds opportunity in adverse situation and succeed their
idea with high prominence in order to earn profits in huge manner. During the year of 2004
General motors recalled their entire electric vehicle EV-1 without taking will of their owners.
This was due to ineffective engine capacity of the vehicle so in this manner Elon got an idea to
manufacture such cars which are associated with electric engine but at the same time they are
powerful than gasoline engines (Urbano and Aparicio, 2016). He analysed that electric cars are
having bleak future due to which he initiated Tesla with not the objective to make profits but to
control the situation of miserable future of electric cars. In this manner he created 3 tiered
strategies in which they are going to launch electric cars which are laced with all the emerging
technologies. As the company was founded in the year of 2003 with the help of engineers those
are willing to improve electric cars and prove that they can be better than gasoline engines.
Visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk is co-founder of PayPal, Tesla and founder of SpaceX. His
incredible vision leads him to find opportunities in adverse situation and to initiate Tesla. In the
year 2002 he founded SpaceX and right after that year he founded Tesla with the help of his

open mind and creative vision. Elon Musk is the person who recognised the problem and
converted them into opportunity by introducing technological advanced electric vehicle.
Tesla is a company which is engaged in manufacturing of laced with high technology
electronic cars. The company is using prominent technology in manufacturing of their cars due
to which they are leader in the market. The first car of the company, Tesla Roadster was
launched in the year of 2008. The next model of the company was Model S. The model was
released in the year of 2012 in which various technologies were added such as Autopilot,
supercharging and many more. The company was fully associated with developing their model
by improving Hardware and software for the whole fleet. The next model of Tesla model 3 was
higher in battery life and had so many luxurious features due to which this provided specific
edge to the company to deal with market competitors (Gursoy, Altinay and Kenebayeva, 2017).
Innovation is highly essential for the organisation as this provides specific edge to the
organisation in order to deal with market competition. Innovation could lead in saving of
resources in such a way that high edge market prominence can be attained. Innovation could the
business to have creative development of their business due to which latest trends can be
inserted in the business (Julien, 2018). Besides this innovation is helpful in continuous
improvement of the business by which sustainability can be managed for longer duration. In the
context of Tesla with the help of innovation they fulfilled needs and expectation of their
customer which helped the company to sustain. Besides this innovation may help the business
to grow and provide economic growth to the nation. With the help of innovation societal
benefits can be provided to people due to that overall productivity can be enhanced.
B. About the Entrepreneurial Organisation:
Entrepreneurial Organisation is a concept that encourages suggestion and development of
new ideas and innovations from all employees’ part of organisation. It is combination of
various aspects like Ideas, Innovations, flexibility, agility etc. Concept of entrepreneurial differs
from managerial organisation from their structure point of view; they have their own specific
model to operate. To be a successful organisation and achieve all the business objectives and
goals with available resources, it is required to have an effective entrepreneurial policy and
team to follow that policy efficiently (Coulibaly, Erbao and Mekongcho, 2018). This
responsibility lies with the entrepreneur of the business to build an effective team to achieve

business goals with ideas and innovation skills of their employees. Entrepreneur must listen and
welcome the suggestions, feedbacks, ideas and innovations from the employees and make them
feel as important part of the organisation by motivating them with proper rewards and benefits.
This will assist organisation in building an effective and skilful team which applies their skills
and knowledge towards the vision of the organisation and achieve all the targets in the most
efficient and effective manner possible. Organisation must analyse various factors as well as
needs of their employees to keep them motivated such that they work with complete dedication
towards the organisational goal and work with effective coordination as a team. Every
organisation must have inspirational and inspiring leaders to become a successful
entrepreneurial organisation. In this study we have taken Tesla as our subject example which by
itself is a great example of idea and innovation.
The company is led by Elon Musk who is its CEO and a successful entrepreneur.
Entrepreneur must make sure they fit into the role of leader of the organisation who gives
continuous direction to its employees and set an example by himself. It is very important that
entrepreneur of Tesla or any other organisation possess all the important qualities of a
successful leader within themselves. Some of the qualities possessed by an effective leader are
Integrity, effective communication, influencing personality, gratitude, and ability to keep
teams collaborated and motivated. It is important for a leader to be always reachable by its
workforce and open for their suggestions and feedbacks, otherwise this might lead to a negative
or adverse impact on employee mind-set due to which they might not be able to work with
complete dedication (Schillo, Persaud and Jin, 2016)
. In the presence of two-way effective communication, employee will take themselves as
part of all the organisational activities and success which will inspire and motivate the
employees to work with whole dedication. There are number of responsibilities vested in the
leader of an organisation such as Providing Vision, making decisions at important times,
delegation of powers and responsibilities and be a look up to person and all this
responsibilities are passed to the entrepreneurs as he is the one who have to act and fill the
shoes of the leader of the organisation (Singh and Gaur,, 2018). It is required for them to be
innovative, in case of Tesla its Entrepreneur cum leader is Elon Musk who is known for his
innovation skills and ideas. He has led his organisation towards various innovative ideas and

had a success like in the field of Electronic Vehicles and appliances, various solar projects,
space programs etc. This entire example displays the capability of Elon Musk as an
entrepreneur to identify and grab the opportunities.
Organisational success is dependent majorly on two aspects or roles i.e. its leader or
entrepreneur who frames the visions, ideas and roadmap for future course of the organisation
and its workforce who is responsible to execute the policies, strategies and roadmap with their
skills specific to their job roles. Since all the planning and opportunities are the responsibilities
of entrepreneur, they must make sure that they analyse their resource capabilities and all other
resources and need to identify and cover opportunities available within the market to in their
goals and visions. This vision must be both innovative as well as feasible. Entrepreneur roles
become even more important with the fact that actions of workforce on ground are completely
dependent upon the policies and strategies framed by the entrepreneurs. If this policies and
ideas are effective this will lead to growth in its business and market position as if the idea is
unique and innovative it will give organisation edge over its competitors. With context of Tesla
their CEO and entrepreneur Elon Musk has led its organisation towards the vision of Electronic
vehicle giant and today they are one of the most successful and most innovative organisation
across the world. The business for Tesla has gone by a huge margin and they have got the edge
in the business performance above all their competitors as their idea and innovation to build and
innovate beautifully designed and environment friendly electric vehicles is unique and highly
appreciated across the world (Cieślik, 2016). They are further expanding and growing their
business activities across whole world with the fruitful result of their entrepreneur’s idea and
innovation.
C. About Contribution to the Economy and Society:
Economy is the term to measure financial performance or the country and organisation and
society is the place or demographics where the business exists and carries on its business
activities. Since every organisation exists in the economy and use resources of the society, they
also have some obligation towards the society. Every organisation must try and contribute in
every possible manner towards the society welfare and at the time of any distress or problem to
the society and its people. It can be said the financial success of the business can be measured
through its contribution to the economy of the country and its sustainability and brand value can

be maintained with proper fulfilling of its responsibilities towards society. With context of
Tesla too it is critical for them to contribute adequately to the economy in a manner that would
maintain a balance of goal accomplishment both for the organisation itself as well as society
and country (Robinso and et. al., 2016).
With respect to Tesla, they have invested and innovated largely on electronic vehicles
and other appliances related to this like Batteries etc. Due to this idea they have established
their working factories and offices at various places across the world to grow their business
operations and revenue. This will benefit the society and economy from various aspects such as
Job creation, New Production Innovation, wealth creation etc. Resources are required to
achieve every business goal and since Tesla has recently grown such that it has established its
operations in various countries therefore it has recruited large number of employees to fulfil
their needs and this has contributed immensely to the economy and society as with result of this
unemployment rate will be brought down for the country and it will contribute towards
livelihood of the people as well. Ultimately more money would be injected in the economy and
living standard of citizens will be enhanced. Another major contribution by the entrepreneurial
organisation to the society is that it will it will help to improve the GDP of the country as the
production will go up with the help if this innovation and increase in its production of goods
and increase in supplies as the demand grows. This will enhance performance of various
economic factors like Labour, natural resources, transportation and since the innovation would
be there so it will be something which is special or innovative as compared to what already
exists in the society and provide competitive edge over competitors and other economies (Kraus
and et.al., 2017).
Tesla is innovating various products with electric capabilities which have innovation of
using solar power and electricity instead of scares and environment harmful resources like
fuels. This innovation has enhanced awareness and sense of social responsibility in the society.
Everything that an organisation does has a primary or secondary goal of making and creating
wealth from its activities and for its stakeholders. Wealth is created for the company and
country through various activities like Export of supplies, increase in production and
manufacturing activities, increase in revenues, cost efficiency, utilizing the resources
manufactured domestically instead of importing from other countries. Tesla is based out of

USA and it is using various natural resources and making smart use of innovation and
technology such that they are able to reach mass number of population across the world and due
to which they have seen a major boost in their revenues and a decreasing trend in their overall
cost (Vuorio, Puumalainen and Fellnhofer, 2018). They are creating wealth by exporting their
goods to other countries and deriving profit margin and by utilizing all the resources
effectively. In the coming generation, world is going to shift from current fuel dependency
towards eco-friendly practices. Therefore, this positive boost the morale of the organisation and
its employees as their innovation is going to sustain for a long time going ahead in the future
and contribute to the economy in the strong financial performance.
Times are very uncertain; this can be proven with the situation and scenario the whole
world is facing today. From being normal at some point suddenly every business organisation
in the world is somehow impacted due to on-going COVID 19 Pandemic. This pandemic has
caused several issues to the business organisations, economies, society as well as the employees
associated with the organisation (Johnson and Schaltegger, 2020). Some of the major issues
caused are disruption of business activities, life losses, and Job loss for employees as result of
bad performance of the organisation, contraction of country’s economies, disruptions of supply
chain and change in way of living and operating lives.
This pandemic has caused a change in the need of people and offerings of the
organisation to the Society. Tesla is also being victim of this issues due to this pandemic as
before this pandemic its business activities were going smoothly and there was continuous
growth in its revenues and sales but due to this pandemic their sales and revenues has taken a
dip and caused various financial hurdles similar to what it has caused to other organisations
existing in the society like Liquidity issues, decline in revenues, uncertain demands, disrupted
supply chain of its resources consumed and offerings offered. It had been bounded to adhere
with various government guidelines and rules published to control the negative impact of this
pandemic even if those policies have negative and adverse impact upon the business itself. For
example with view of controlling the spread of the pandemic most of the countries has issued
lockdown guidelines due to which any business is restricted to operate even if they want to
which is even necessary with respect to their own welfare as well as welfare of the society
(Boudreaux, Nikolaev and Klein, 2019)

The above discussed issues are the one’s which organisation has either faced or are
facing but the effect of pandemic doesn’t end here as they have to face some of the
unpredictable situations in the coming future as the result of this pandemic such as change in
demands or preferences in the market. Situation is lot different now as compared to situation
that was there before this pandemic. Every organisation had their plans before pandemic for
upcoming 5 years but all those plans now need a serious and critical analysis and modification
as per the changes in factors. There are various factors which are change like liquidity and
finance performance of the organisation, purchasing power of the customers, preferences etc.
So, this has made them to evaluate themselves properly by considering all the relevant factors
and make the necessary changes in their plans as well as assumptions (Muñoz and Cohen,
2018).
All this pandemic scenarios that the world has either faced or facing or might face are
uncertain and unpredictable, therefore every organisation has to deliberately anticipate the
possibility of such pandemics and be prepared and keep their employees prepared by
continuously having an updated reference guide to deal with such situations, actions to be taken
in case they come across any of such scenarios and also use such technology which might help
them to continue their business operations remotely from anywhere in the world (Audretsch and
et. al., 2017). For Example, Cloud and various video conference applications is one of the
technologies that have immensely helped the world to carry on their operations during this
tough pandemic time.
CONCLUSION
From the above detailed discussion this can be concluded that entrepreneurs are driver
for the economy of world due to which economic benefits are provided to the country and
higher benefits can be given to citizens as well. Entrepreneurs are providing new business
insight to the organisation by which they can lead the market and attain market prominence as
well. There are significant traits for an entrepreneur that may differentiate them from ordinary
person. Entrepreneurs are farsighted due to which they find opportunities in adverse situation
and lead the market with their collective efforts. Entrepreneurial Organisation is defined as the
concept which is laced with taking suggestions due to which new ideas can be developed.

Entrepreneurs are the person who are contributing the economy in prominent manner as they
create jobs and innovate products through which overall wealth can be created and societal
benefits can be provided as well.

REFERENCES
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