Elon Musk, the most innovative entrepreneur of

Elon Musk, the most innovative entrepreneur of the 21st century, is a visionary who goes beyond just an entrepreneur to redesign the future of humanity.

Behind his success in completely different industries, including PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink, is a unique and systematic way to learn.

The core of Musk’s learning method is the ‘first principle thinking method’.

“I think the frame of physics is a very good way of thinking. In general, rather than reasoning by analogy, I’m compressing certain problems into fundamental truths and then judging from there.”

The most obvious example of this methodology is the SpaceX founding process.

Musk, who vowed to send a rocket to Mars in 2002, faced astronomical rocket prices at the time.

According to conventional wisdom in the industry, rockets were bound to be expensive.

But Musk was different.

He calculated the raw material values of aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber, which are the most basic materials that make up a rocket, and found that they were only 3% of the rocket’s value in the market.

From this insight, he decided to build his own rocket, ignoring all common sense in the existing aerospace industry.

In the end, SpaceX succeeded in lowering the cost of launching the rocket by one-tenth.

Similar cases are seen in Tesla’s battery development.

When he said he would lower the price of electric cars, most people said it would be difficult because battery packs were expensive, but Musk broke down the batteries into cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, etc. and figured out that if each material was purchased on the London Metal Exchange, it could be lowered from $600 to $80 per kwh.

As such, the first principle thinking method is a method of finding new answers starting from the most basic facts, completely excluding existing assumptions and customs.

Musk’s second feature is thorough self-study and practical learning.

Especially in the field of rocket engineering, it has shown remarkable results.

Although he majored in physics at university, he studied mainly in the field of capacitors when he was an undergraduate, so he was not very knowledgeable in the field of aerospace, but he is known to have begun to build related knowledge through self-study.

What’s more surprising is that he didn’t just study theory.

According to early Tesla and SpaceX investor Steve Jervetson, Musk calculated at the time that the cost of raw materials needed to actually build the rocket accounted for only 3% of the finished rocket’s sales price.

This was not just a desk head study, but a result of thorough analysis and calculation of data from actual industrial sites.

In the process of starting a SpaceX startup, his practical learning approach is well revealed.

Musk told employees when he started SpaceX.

“The first goal of our business is to break the old mindset that has long been prevalent in rocket-making companies.”

He did not just improve the existing rocket, but entered the rocket industry with a completely new approach.

It recruited competent engineers such as Tom Mueller to build a rocket called Falcon 1 and secure a launch site to test it, but it had the worst time, with all three rocket launch attempts failing, and the 2008 financial crisis from the United States.

But he didn’t give up and learned from his failures, finally succeeding in his fourth launch.

Musk’s third learning feature is a multi-disciplinary fusion approach.

“I frame physical thinking as a frame of thought, and I dig into the fundamentals of matter and think again from it, but I don’t do it in a way that I infer.”

Applying this physical mindset to all areas of business is his uniqueness.

In fact, Musk majored in business administration at university, but he was more focused on physics and has since applied physics principles thoroughly in all areas of his business.

Especially noteworthy is the convergent learning attitude he has shown since childhood.

In 1984, at the age of 12, he bought the Commodore VIC-20 and IBM PC XT, taught himself programming language BASIC, and created a shooting game called “Blastar” and sold it to a game magazine for $500.

He also enjoyed making and launching model rockets thanks to his father, who was an engineer, teaching him technology.

As such, he has learned by naturally converging various fields such as programming, engineering, and physics since he was young.

What should not be missed in Musk’s learning method is his persistent spirit of challenge.

Musk predicted that the long-term survival probability would be very slim from the time the company was established, and he valued management and personnel to the extent that he participated in all interviews of 1,000 initial employees.

And in fact, SpaceX was on the verge of bankruptcy due to a series of failures in its early days, but he continued to push for the project by pouring all of his wealth into it.

After all, Elon Musk’s learning method goes beyond simple knowledge acquisition.

Fundamental thinking starting from the first principle, experiential learning that combines theory and practice, and a consensus (integration of knowledge) approach that combines various fields are the core.

Above all, he is not afraid of failure and maintains a posture of continuous challenge and learning.

This learning method is his own secret weapon to make seemingly impossible dreams into reality.