Elon Musk Wins 2012 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership Award | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk Wins 2012 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership Award

popularmechanics.com

95 pointsMikeCapone10 comments

Just 3 weeks ago, Elon received the Mars Pioneer Award from the Mars Society. Here is his acceptance speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK0kTcJFnVk#t=10m56s

I look forward to listening to his next speech, hopefully geared towards motivating others to innovate new world changing technology. Something like his Caltech speech: http://commencement.caltech.edu/archive/2012_address

A couple more Musk videos for those who might have missed them when they first came out:

Bloomberg profile that gives a good overview of his companies:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184-elon-musk-profiled-b...

Reddit AMA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6...

The Bloomberg video is one of the most interesting tech interviews I've ever seen.

Anybody have any information on Elon Musk's leadership style? What makes him so successful at inspiring people and making efficient organizations?

A similar question was asked on Quora, and there were some pretty good answers. http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk

Well deserved but I do have a bone to pick with awards retrospectively given after the outcome and then attributing success to individuals ex post facto.

What exactly is the point of calling a success after the success? Seems like redundant ass kissing to me.

A fawning mix between humanity's hindsight bias mixed with a large dollop of the sharp shooter fallacy.

Indeed, if I recall correctly, two of the most awarded companies of the late 90s were Enron and MCI WorldCom by the likes of Fortune, Forbes and other "respectable" business journals.

Not stating that Musk is like those guys at all - but it does make me wonder about the true purpose of awards.

Elon probably shares your sentiments, since he was an avid reader of Feynman. Source: http://www.iop.org/careers/workinglife/profiles/page_37749.h...

Feynman himself once said that he didn't like honors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg

So when Elon won the Lady Vivamus sword after accepting the heinlein award for advances in space commercialization, he fools around with it instead of just being another trophy, sometimes to impress the ladies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRpqZjfFzGg

Yeah Elon is perfect. Except for being peer pressured by shady super wealthy people.

I apologize for the hero worship, but I was merely trying to share some information that might be interesting to others. Elon is by no means perfect, his public speaking needs a lot of work, for example. Curiously though, he doesn't stutter at all when he was interviewed by Hannah. =)

I hope many kids read about this man's exploits and are inspired to follow suit in tackling hard problems with the potential to change the world. Wish we had more smart people doing that...

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