
Elon Musk: From electric cars to Mars [video] - antr
http://video.ft.com/v/1974478965001/From-electric-cars-to-Mars-Elon-Musk
======
api
This guy is one of the few actual living heroes, in my opinion.

The striking thing about Musk is that he's a visionary who can execute. In my
experience these things are usually mutually exclusive. Inventors and
visionaries are generally piss-poor at business, and businessmen usually don't
have an imaginative bone in their bodies.

As for why these skills are mutually exclusive, I think that deserves a great
deal of thought and study. Personally I fault the culture of both disciplines.
Visionary/inventor culture comes from a sort of a countercultural root and is
overtly hostile to business and marketing. Meanwhile, business and marketing
tends to inculcate a kind of narcissism or even sociopathy that isolates these
fields from everyone else, and to disparage the skills of others as mere
"human resources." A businessman has no need to learn anything other than
business-- he/she can just outsource the rest, right?

As a result, those who invent and those who execute are nearly always at
complete odds with one another, with predictable results, and rarely are these
abilities combined in the same person.

I think the thing that needs to die is the "my skills are the only skills that
matter" narcissism. I've seen it in _every_ discipline. Only engineering
matters, only marketing matters, etc.

------
inovica
Elon Musk has a great and relaxed manner about him. I love how he is thinking
big and didn't just take his fortune and retire to an island. Irrespective of
what he does from now I think he can be an inspiration to anyone of trying to
live their dreams. Not sure if I'm going to be unpopular saying this but the
posts on HN about making a few thousand dollars a month (and there are certain
people on here who are well known for this) are dwarfed by people like this
who truly try to make a difference. I personally would rather talk about the
next Apple, the next Microsoft, the next Ford than talk about split-testing my
app and achieving $10k/month of sales.

------
michael_miller
It's certainly impressive how much Musk has accomplished in his life so far. I
hope that he decides to pursue his electric jet
([http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/03/musk_plans_supercar_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/03/musk_plans_supercar_supersonic_jet/)).
How amazing would it be to buy a jet for ~$1m, and have it cost basically
nothing to operate? To be able to go to the airport, no security, hop in, and
go across the country on a whim's notice?

------
Gring
"We might even see a flying car".

Sign me up! :-)

~~~
eslachance
There are already... kind of.

the Terrafugia and the Pal-V are both flying cars, though not very sexy I'll
admit.

