Elon Musk's biographer Walter Isaacson shed light on what makes the Tesla Inc TSLA and SpaceX CEO stand apart from visionaries such as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
What Sets Musk Apart: "One of the things that makes him really different from a Steve Jobs or anybody else is he doesn’t just care about the product. He cares about the machine that makes the product and the factory,” Isaacson said on Twitter Spaces.
It is when Musk is in Boca Chica SpaceX launch site or Hawthorne Tesla Design Center, or in Texas on the assembly lines, he processes things, the biographer said. It is there "he might just start talking and telling stories,” he noted.
See Also: How Did Elon Musk Make His Money
Musk is someone who personally involves himself in production, Isaacson said. Contrasting the billionaire with Jobs, he noted that the latter would design the product, be it the iPhone or the MacBook Air, then fly it over to China to have it manufactured there.
What Musk does is make sure his engineers, his designers and himself are there right on the assembly line so they can watch every time something happens and a red light goes off on the assembly, Isaacson said.
They have an iterative process where the designers are also involved, he added. This, according to the biographer, is how constant innovation happens and manufacturing can be made better.
Musk’s Place In History: Musk would go down in history as one who is closest to Jobs or Ford founder Henry Ford, Isaacson said. They had made many flaws but they understood design and manufacturing, he added.
The Tesla CEO's place in history is probably greater than any current innovator or leader, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg or Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Isaacson said.
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