Who is Elon Musk? Expert Answer
Current Role and Organization
South African Entrepreneur, Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He is also the founder of The Boring Company and the cofounder of Neuralink and OpenAI (High 2017).Being everywhere he seems to align with technological transformation. Musk administers engineering, product development and products design of Tesla Motors which produce battery products, mass electric cars and solar roofs. In SpaceX, Musk oversees manufacturing and development of advanced rocket and spacecraft used for mission, targeting to create self-sustaining city on the Mars. The OpenAI and Neuralink used artificial intelligence to benefit humanity and developing device to implant in human brain merging with software, respectively.
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Work History
Musk worked as a successful entrepreneur throughout his life. In 1995 he along with his brother Kimbal Musk launched his first company Zip2. With the money he got from Zip2 sale, in 1999 he started X.com the online banking company that was later known as Paypal. Holding high paypal stock and its sale to ebay, he founded third company SpaceX in 2002 as a long term goal to colonize Mars. Tesla Motors formed in 2003, Musk performed his duty as CEO, co-founder and product architect. In 2006, he helped his cousin with his idea of SolarCity. In 2017, he launched The boring company to reduce traffic by building tunnels (Hartman & Weinberger 2020). Musk stepped down as chairman of Tesla after a case was filed on him for making false statement on making Tesla private in 2018 (Ohnsman 2019).
Educational Background
After high school graduation, Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario for two years and left Canada to earn bachelor’s degree in physics and economics from University of Pennsylvania. During his study, he had his first entrepreneurial experiment by renting 10-bedroom frat house to make it night club (Hartman & Weinberger 2020). After graduation, Musk went to Stanford University in California to pursue PhD degree in energy physics. He left after two days of start, decided to try his luck and be part of internet boom.
Family Background
Elon Musk belongs to a family of Entrepreneurs. Her mother Maye Musk did five jobs to support her three children after divorcing his husband, Errol Musk who was a wealthy engineer. In 2017, Maye Musk created history being the oldest woman to contract for CoverGirl campaign. The three siblings started their own business being the known entrepreneurs. The innovative attitude of the family stems from Elon’s grandmother who was first ever chiropractor in Canada (Turner 2018). Musk had two wives and has five children from his first wife Justine Wilson. He currently has Grimes the famous musician as his partner.
Industry involvements
Musk companies have solved humanity dire problems like climate change through electric cars, tunnels to evade gridlocked freeways. Beyond these initiatives dealing current pandemic, Tesla has worked on ventilator parts shipping medical devices to hospital (Berke & Hartmans 2020). Mush with net worth of 38.4 billion USD currently funded $ 1 million To TeamTrees planting trees around the world. Musk companies in this industry are striving to use AI and innovation strategies to operate.
Usually, the corporate governance in an organisation is focussed on minimising risks, however, Elon Musk as a leader believes that a lack of failure is an indication of lack of innovation. The above belief shows that Elon Musk is a visionary leader who wants innovation to change the world, for which he uses a transformative style of leadership (Padgett, 2015).
Ghasabeh and Provitera (2017) argued that transformation leadership not only focusses on satisfying the basic needs of the followers but also on fulfilling the higher desires of followers by inspiring them to create innovative solutions. Two important aspects of transformation leadership are creativity and innovativeness. These two aspects make the leader a charismatic personality that can motivative employees to achieve better outcomes. Instead of focusing on the task, a transformational leader is focussed on strengthening individuals so they are committed to contributing to organisational changes. A transformative leader focuses on shaping the attitudes and values of the followers so that any initiative by the leader can be easily implemented and is also effective.
However, Ghasabeh and Provitera (2017) identified a drawback with transformational leadership; it may drive an organisation towards rapid changes that may become an issue in corporate governance.
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Elon Musk’s transformative style is evident from two instances as discussed below.
Clifford (2019) mentioned that despite being a multi-billionaire, Elon Musk is known for working a lot. As per various reports, Musk works for 120 hours in a week. When a leader is so hardworking, it is natural that the followers will also put in efforts in the work. Elon Musk has established various companies, one of which is Tesla that builds electric vehicles. There are two reasons why Musk established Tesla: First, according to him, there is a need to accelerate the use of sustainable energy, as environmental damage can become a risk for humanity. Second, self-driving cars will allow people to do something productive instead of being in the driver seat and stuck in traffic. The above statements show that Elon Musk wants to change the energy consumption pattern that can improve environmental protection, and humans can focus on more important things than driving.
However, being a transformative leader has drawbacks as argued by Ghasabeh and Provitera (2017). Elon Musk is a transformation leader who is not open to criticism by people who do not share his vision. Tesla being a public company is open to criticism by media and several public investors. In August 2018, he posted on Twitter that he is planning to take the company private. Due to this tweet, the share prices went up drastically and the trading had to be halted temporarily (Stewart, 2018).
The problem with the tweet is the corporate announcements are not made on twitter. There is a well-defined process that involves boarding meetings, and the regulators are informed before making such an announcement. The leadership style of Elon Musk created a corporate governance issue that resulted in the US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) to investigate if there was a violation of any law (Stewart, 2018).
Thus, it can be inferred that while transformation leadership style is inspiring, it can create issues as well.
References
Berke, J & Hartmans, A 2020, ‘Elon Musk is working to solve the ventilator shortage caused by the coronavirus — here are all the other humanitarian crises he’s tried to fix, and how it’s going so far,’ BUSINESS INSIDER, 19 April, viewed 20 April 2020 <https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-efforts-humanitarian-crises-and-their-status-2018-7>
Clifford, C. (2015). Elon Musk: This is the ‘Why’ of Tesla. CNBC. [Online]. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/elon-musk-on-the-why-and-purpose-behind-tesla.html. [24th April 2020].
Ghasabeh, M.S. & Provitera, M.J. (2017). Transformational Leadership: Building an Effective Culture to Manage Organisational Knowledge. The Journal of Value-Based Leadership. 10(2): Article 7.
Hartman, A & Weinberger, M 2020, ‘How billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk went from getting bullied as a child to becoming one of the most successful and provocative men in tech,’ BUSINESS INSIDER, 7th February, viewed 21 April 2020 <https://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-elon-musk-2016-7>
High, P 2017, ‘ Possible Elon Musk’s Biggest Idea Yet-Revolutionizing Education,’Forbes, 18 September, viewed 21 April <https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2017/09/18/possibly-elon-musks-biggest-idea-yet-revolutionizing-education/#57c66c734888>
Ohnsman, A 2019, ‘Elon Musk’s Tesla Tweet Puts CEO Role At Risk Again,’ Forbes, 25 February, viewed 21 April <https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/02/25/elon-musks-tesla-tweet-puts-ceo-role-at-risk-again/#5ace99ab6cdb>
Padgett, L.N. (2015). Elon Musk: Transformational Leadership in Action. Mafiadoc.com. [Online]. Available at: https:/mafiadoc.com_elon-musk-transformational-leadership-in-action_5c9390f0097c471f4c8b45a1.pdf. [24th April 2020].
Stewart, E. (2018). Elon Musk’s (probably serious) Proposal to take Tesla Private and the Fallout, explained. VOX. [Online]. Available at: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/17692582/elon-musk-tesla-stock-sec-investigation-nasdaql. [24th April 2020].
Turner, A 2018, ‘Elon Musk comes from a family of entrepreneurs – here’s who they are,’ CNBC, 12 August, viewed 21 April 2020 < https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/12/elon-musk-family-tree-tosca-kimbal-maye-entrepreneurs-spacex-tesla.html>
