Musk: In large companies, processes are a substitute for thinking

Musk is once again standing under the global spotlight.

On April 25, local time, social media platform Twitter announced that it accepted Elon Musk's acquisition agreement with a transaction amount of $44 billion. When the news came, the Internet caused a heated discussion, and this business leader, who often played cards according to common sense, once again stirred up the storm in the field of public opinion.

As we all know, the tentacles of Musk's business empire have spanned multiple industries. In addition to the recent hit on Twitter, Musk is also the head of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, SolarCity, TT and many other star companies, involving electric vehicles, space travel, solar power, hyperloops, and even brain-computer interfaces.

In the 2022 list of the world's billionaires released by Forbes, Musk topped the world's richest man with $219 billion. The inventor, entrepreneur and billionaire genius is now Silicon Valley's most legendary figure.

Regarding Musk's story, the media has reported too much, and I will not repeat it here. The guest business scholar read Musk's speeches, interviews and social platform related remarks in public in the past 5 years, and sorted out 58 of his thoughts on business management, entrepreneurship and business, thinking cognition, and the future universe, hoping to inspire you.

1. Operation and management

1. For a company, there are actually only three titles that really make sense: President, Secretary, and Treasurer. Technically, they could be the same person, and all the other titles are basically made up. The CEO is made up, the CFO is made up, and these don't make any sense.

2. The trend of using self-created acronyms is spreading at SpaceX. The overuse of abbreviations seriously hinders communication. For individuals, the sporadic occurrence of abbreviations doesn't seem so bad, but if 1,000 people are all creating abbreviations, the result is that over time we will have to hand out a huge vocabulary list for each new employee.

In fact, no one can remember all the acronyms, and because people don't want to look like an idiot in a meeting, they sit there in silence, ignorant. This is especially tough for new hires.

This practice must stop immediately, or I will take drastic measures — as I have given enough warning over the years. Unless approved by me, other abbreviations cannot be included in SpaceX's glossary. If the existing acronym cannot be justified, it should be deleted. The key to measuring an abbreviation is whether it helps or hinders communication.

3. In many large companies, processes become alternatives to thinking. Companies encourage you to do things like a screw in a complex machine, and frankly, it allows you to retain people who are less smart and less creative.

4. I certainly don't set goals that are impossible. I think that impossible goals can make people negative. You can't get people to walk through a wall by hitting their heads against it.

5. It is often wrong to hire many people to do a complex thing. Quantity can never make up for the quality advantage, and the large number of people will also reduce efficiency and increase task costs.

6. If you want to fire someone, you should fire them right away, otherwise it will only waste each other's time.

7. I think it's important for a person to have a "feedback loop" so that he can constantly think about what he has done and know in a timely manner how well he is doing and how he can do better. So the best piece of advice is: Ask yourself repeatedly, can I do better?

As the "feedback loop" becomes weaker and less responsive to customers, companies become more and more like monopolists. That way, you can't maximize people's happiness, and making people happy should be our overall goal.

8. In order for the mass market to be able to afford new technologies, two things must be done. One is that you need economies of scale, and the other is that you need to design iterations, and you need to go through several versions.

9. Many businesses get the focus out of focus and spend a lot of money doing things that don't make the product any better. Every company should ask itself if what it's doing to make the product or service better; if not, it should call a halt.

Usually my advice is to spend less time on finance, meetings, PPT and more time making amazing products.

At Tesla, we never spend money on advertising. I actually don't like the concept of marketing, it sounds like it's trying to trick people into buying something.

10. I don't mean to disrupt and disruptive innovation, but there are some very important things that need to be realized. In order to achieve this goal, if there must be some subversion, I will do it. What really encourages me is that when I want to make disruptive innovations, I will do the necessary subversion, the necessary destruction.

11. If I were to list all the mistakes I have made on a single table, it would be a very long list. I may have made the mistake of spending too much time on corporate administration and other things, but when I walked into the factory, it got better.

12. One can either join a company that gathers elites and respects talent, or works with a ragtag group. The success of the enterprise, in most cases, is a group of excellent people come together to make a great product. No matter how talented this group of people is, they must work together to focus on the right product direction to be a huge success.

13. If something has to be designed and invented and you have to figure out how to ensure that the value of what you create outweighs the cost of the input, then that's probably my core skill.

14. You can't just be slightly better, you can be much better; you don't just need to be 10% better at doing things, but you have to create 10 times the value. Think about how the iPod replaced the Walkman, or how the iPhone upended BlackBerry.

15. Anything inaccurate must be corrected.

2. Entrepreneurship and business

1. I used to want to get a job at Netscape, which was pretty much the only Internet company at the time, but I didn't do very well. I walked around the front desk, but I was too shy to talk to people. At that time, I thought to myself, I might as well start a company myself, because no company wants me.

2. I think it is very difficult and painful to start a company. We all know that it's much easier to find a job elsewhere and work for others, it's much less stressful, and you'll have more time in your life doing other things.

But will you be happier? I won't. If you really desire to do something in your heart, you should go all out to do it no matter what, rather than just trying to stop in your spare time. Because it's only when you really go deeper that you'll find that sometimes things get extremely difficult.

So whenever people ask me, what encouragement do you have for entrepreneurs who want to start a business? My answer is that if you need encouragement, don't start a business.

3. The so-called entrepreneurship is to chew on the glass and stare into the abyss of death, "Since you must go through hell, then go down."

4. Several important things to do in entrepreneurship: one is to work hard; the other is to attract good talent; the third is to focus on making products and services better; and the fourth is not to follow the general trend alone.

5. You need to work very hard. What does it mean to work hard? When my brother and I started Zip2 together, we started our business in a small, ordinary office, and we spent most of our time on that little couch, working almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I had a girlfriend who had to sleep on the couch in the office in order to be with me. If you're going to set up your own company quickly, hard work is a must. You do a very simple mathematical calculation yourself, others work 50 hours, but you work 100 hours, you will do twice as much work as others.

6. I always put my money into the company I create. I don't believe in using only other people's money to start a business, and I don't think that's right. I wouldn't ask others to invest in something if they weren't prepared to do it themselves.

7. I think the best way to attract venture capital is to try to offer a demo of any product or service and take it that way as much as possible. Just see if you can sell it to real customers and start generating some momentum. The more you do, the more likely you are to get funding.

8. After selling PayPal, I kept thinking: What other problems are most likely to affect the future of humanity? And not just measured in terms of "the best way to make money."

9. There are a lot of smart people working on the Internet right now. Finance and law. That's probably part of the reason we haven't seen more innovation.

10. We first have to "decide" what the best visor in the world looks like and then do it better than that. It's amazing that while you're showing that it's feasible on paper, all the calculations are clear, and people won't believe you until you've produced a sample car they can drive, and I think it's important to remember: if you start a business, you first have to make a prototype product.

11. I've always felt that the failure rate of doing Tesla is much greater than the success rate, I just think it's something that should be done, and I don't want to wait for others to achieve it.

12. Silicon Valley here is "Darwinism": failure to innovate is death.

Third, thinking and cognition

1. If you believe there will be more opportunities in the future, there is no reason for you to be sad about the lost opportunities. You only have a reason to regret it if you lose more than you might gain.

2. I don't argue with people now, because I'm beginning to realize that everyone can only think on the basis of his level of cognition, and when someone tells me that two plus two equals 10, I'll say you're awesome, you're completely right. This is to use an idiom to say: summer worms can not speak ice, well frogs can not speak the sea.

3. Young people should take risks to pursue their dreams: the older they are, the more responsibilities they have to take on. After having a family, you often have to consider other people around you when facing the risk of possible failure, and you become more hesitant. So, I would encourage you that now is the best time to take a risk, let go of your dreams and make sure you don't regret it!

4. There are many people who say that we can't succeed, in fact there are many, many people, but even if they say, "Fate will not always be against us, the 4th time should always be successful", right?

5. My advice is that to understand the nature of things, you should read a book, because I grew up with books. I found myself knowing too much and everything in the book.

I found myself learning anything I needed to learn in order to achieve my goals. I think actually most people can do that. But they often set limits on themselves. Man's abilities are stronger than he thinks. And I've found that if you read a lot of books and communicate with people, you can learn almost anything.

6. I don't think life should be just about solving everyday chores. If that's all there is to it, if all our lives are spent on solving everyday chores, then why do we have to get out of bed every day? There must be something that motivates you and makes you proud to be a part of humanity. It's like Nike's slogan "Just do it", but just "sticking" is not enough, you have to give it your all.

7. The scientific method is really effective in clarifying the truth:

1) Ask a question;

2) Collect as much evidence as possible;

3) Formulate "axioms" based on evidence and try to set a probability value for each "axiom";

4) Draw conclusions based on the validity of practice in order to confirm: whether these "axioms" are correct, relevant, and necessarily lead to this conclusion, and what is the probability?

5) Try to overturn the conclusion, seek rebuttal from others, and further help break your conclusion;

6) If no one can prove that your conclusion is invalid, then you may be right, but not necessarily right.

That's the scientific way, and it's really helpful for figuring out tricky things. But most people won't use it. They prefer wishful thinking, they ignore rebuttals, and they draw conclusions based on the results of what others are doing and not doing. Such inferences lead to "this is true because what I say is true" rather than because it is objectively correct.

8. When Henry Ford built cheap and reliable cars, people said, "Hmm, what's so bad about horses?" "He made a huge bet and won. People have mixed reviews of risk-taking, and no one wants to expose their ugliness.

9. I feel that our teaching should be "problem-focused" rather than tool-focused. For example, if you want to understand how an internal combustion engine works, the best thing to do is to take it apart, study each part, and then assemble it.

What tools do we need in the process? Screwdrivers, wrenches, and various other tools. That way, you'll know what these tools do. But if, on the other hand, you go to a lesson on screwdrivers and wrenches first, it's going to be pretty ineffective.

The way our brains evolved is by remembering things that are relevant to us. So be sure to establish correlation, otherwise the process of memory will be painful and difficult. Because it looks too abstract and irrelevant.

10. Don't simply follow the so-called "megatrends". Most of the time, people tend to copy ready-made solutions, doing only a few fine-tuning at most, so that only small developments can be produced.

I promote the first principles of physics, reducing things in a certain field to the most basic principles and then expanding on them. From this point of view, it is not through analogy to argue, but through all the elements that you think are the most essential. This way, you can tell what you should be doing and what you're just doing in someone else's footsteps.

11. You can put all your eggs in the same basket, provided you control what happens in the basket.

12. If you are not obsessed with what you are doing, stop immediately and find something to do that will make you obsessed. If your dreams don't scare you, you're doing it wrong.

13. Don't be afraid of new arenas. I either watched or participated. Life is too short to bear the endless grievances of grace and resentment.

14. I don't like casinos. If I can't be the host, I don't want to play.

15. In my case, failure is only an option; if you have never failed, it only means that you are not innovative enough.

16. "Have you ever thought about giving up?" I don't give up. "Why?" Either die safely or live brilliantly. As far as I'm concerned, I never give up, never. I mean, Never.

Fourth, the future and the universe

1. When I was a kid, I read a lot of science fiction and was fascinated by the sky, flying to alien planets and discovering aliens.

I did start thinking about these things during college (electric cars, solar, rockets, etc.), and it's not a story made up after the fact. I don't want to be seen as a newbie, and I don't like to follow the trend. I like to turn technologies that are really important and valuable for the future into reality in some way.

Throughout the history of human civilization, you will find that human civilization will basically develop in two different directions: either to become a civilization that lives on multiple planets, or to live on one planet forever until it is eventually extinct in a natural and man-made disaster. I think the former ending is better.

2. Human civilization has a history of 7,000 years, but the ups and downs are very strong. I'm not a natural optimist or pessimist person, but the future of technology will evolve beyond our ability to understand it. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Well, sometimes I find a guy staring at his phone screen all the time. I wonder, who is the "master"? In a way, we're already cyborgs. I mean, if you don't bring your phone with you today, it's like you have limb loss syndrome.

3. What we need to consider is what people are living for. What is the meaning. Is what we are doing expanding the "wisdom map" of humanity?

When I was in college, I was always thinking about what would best affect the future of humanity. In fact, the only thing that makes sense is to strive to improve the wisdom of all mankind and to work for a higher level of collective civilization for a lifetime.

So along the way, I've been thinking: Well, what are the factors that are most likely to affect the future of humanity? Instead of thinking about "What is the best way to make money?" ”

4. 100 years ago, no one could have imagined riding an elevator without an elevator steward. Now, what you can't imagine is an elevator with an elevator steward.

What we are doing now is very important for the future of humanity. If we fail, then at least we can tell everyone that this road actually does not work, and future generations will not try again. So no matter what, we have to stick to it.

Either don't do it, or do it historically.

5. I think there will be a lot of jobs in the future that people won't do without pay. For example, washing dishes, if you wash the dishes all day, you will be very irritable, even if you really like to wash the dishes, are you willing to wash eight hours a day? Another example is the dangerous work, which is dangerous and boring, and there are repetitive stress injuries. I think this is where humanoid robots can get the most value, and our goal is to get robots to do some work that humans don't want to do.

6. I mean, eventually the sun will get bigger and bigger and evaporate the oceans. So, in a way, we'd better do something. I think it's urgent to "multi-planetate" life.

Within our perceptions, this will be the first time in the 4.5 billion years since the birth of the Earth that life has had the opportunity to leave the Earth to live. This time window can be long or short.

Whenever possible, I think we should act. For for external or internal reasons, all civilizations will always experience a collapse.

7. The technology itself is degraded. For example, in ancient Egypt, there was a splendid civilization 5,000 years ago, but then the people who lived there forgot how to build the pyramids, forgot how to read hieroglyphs; the Roman Empire had advanced technology in roads, aqueducts, etc., and then they basically forgot.

A similar "arc" implies that we will go through a similar process. So we should take advantage of this short open window to transfer life. Transport life.

That's right, we can go to Mars. Landing on Mars is not a "backup plan," it's the only realistic option. We can create a real civilization there.

But in the beginning, it would be a bit like an advertisement for The Antarctic by Sackriton (a British Antarctic explorer). He said Antarctica is dangerous and people will be very uncomfortable going there, terrible things can happen, they can die, and that's going to be a long journey.

Still, it's also a great adventure, and if you survive, it's going to be one of the most exciting things ever. The same is true of the ads I made for Mars.

8. Why should I make an effort to hold stocks? Because building a city on Mars requires a lot of resources. And that means a lot of money. Half of my money will be spent helping solve problems on Earth, and the other half will be used to build a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure the continuation of all life.

9. Author of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Science fiction writer Arthur Clark once said, "Any technology that is advanced enough is no different from magic at first glance." Think about humans 300 years ago and if you see today we can fly. You can use the network to communicate over long distances. You can immediately browse the news around the world, and they will surely say: This is magic. If I could invent advanced technology, wouldn't it be like magic?

10. Exploring space with 0.5% or 1% of Earth's GDP is a wise investment for the future.

11. We can create things that are smarter than we are, and they don't have to be human.

12. I would like to say that you are all magicians of the 21st century, and imagination has no limits. Don't let anything stop you, just do as much magic as you want.

13. "Do you believe in fate and religion?" No, I only believe in physics. Physics is really about the workings of the world.

14. When will it land on Mars? The earliest 5 years, the latest 10 years later.

15. I wish I could die on Mars – not by falling into the Martian atmosphere, of course.