Elon Musk and Innovation

 

I am a fan of Elon Musk and his way of thinking. I've watched countless interviews, but one had a line that stood out enough for me to pay attention to. In a 2018 interview with youtube tech star Marquez Brownlee (during a Tesla factory tour), Elon mentioned this line. "The best part is not the part, and the best process is the impractical."

Tour of the SpaceX:

Fast forward to the past few weeks and I'm watching a long informal interview tour of the SpaceX facility on another major YouTube channel, Everyday Astronaut. Most of the content flew right over my head (the intricate detail of rocket technology), but it contained an absolute golden nugget. Elon detailed the five-step innovation strategy he and his staff use to innovate at both SpaceX and Tesla.

This is exactly what Elon sees. All of the requirements are pretty ridiculous and the first step is realizing how ridiculous they are. He goes on to quote the following and add further guidance during the idea stage of the product or process.

Intelligent person:

"It's especially dangerous if an intelligent person tells you the requirements, because you can't ask enough questions. But whoever you are, everybody's wrong sometimes. This is very honest and spot on. It's easy to get carried away with an idea without being honest with yourself or your company. "If you haven't added something back in between now and then, you haven't removed enough. There tends to be a very strong 'let's add this part or process step if needed' bias, but a lot you can get 'just in case'." “Discussion. Bets cannot be hedged.”

Removing parts or Processes:

Elon Musk has another wise saying when it comes to removing parts or processes. You can't ask the department. You have to ask people. Those who put forward requirements must take responsibility for them. Otherwise, there may be a requirement that someone who no longer works in the organization comes to you, holding you back. "

Innovation Strategy:

This is a key aspect of your overall innovation strategy. Think about the projects you've worked on. Often a part of you wants to be bigger, better, and brighter and thinks this is the way forward. But this is not permanent. Speed matters, especially in innovation, and if you get stuck with what you think is important instead of what's actually important, your project can go crazy.

Organization on Earth:

Every organization on Earth has processes going on because "it's always been done this way", but they may not understand the dangers of it. Astronauts every day would be the perfect addition to Elon's conversation, summed up as follows:

Elon also asserts that different departments within an organization often have the impression that something is there for reasons imposed by one department, but that department does the same in return. I believe simplify or improve.

Smart Engineers:

“The most common mistake smart engineers make is optimizing something that shouldn't be there.” Everyone in high school and college is trained to answer questions. In other words, don't tell your professor the question is silly, or you can't say you got a bad grade. I just have to answer the question. Before you know it, everyone is wearing the Mental Straight Sweater.

Cycle/Accelerate production time:

You're moving too slowly, go fast. But don't speed up until you've finished the other three tasks first. If you're digging a grave, don't dig fast, and stop digging graves. Finally, once you've gone through the first four steps, you're ready to automate. Elon says he made a personal mistake of going back through these five steps over and over again.