On August 4th, Alan Mulally celebrated his 75th birthday. Mulally retired from Ford Motor Company in 2014, after returning the company to profitability following its struggles from the late-2000s recession. Under Mulally’s leadership, Ford was the only American major car manufacturer to avoid a bailout fund provided by the government.
Mulally’s achievements at Ford are chronicled in Bryce Hoffman’s book American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company.
NASA’s partnership with SpaceX has brought renewed excitement. With the first successful launch of American crew from U.S. soil on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule on May 30th, SpaceX ushered in new hope for the future of human space exploration.
So today, I turn to Randy Kirk’s book entitled The Elon Musk Method: Business Principles from the World’s Most Powerful Entrepreneur. Jim Cantrell, founding member of SpaceX, reported, “Elon’s ideas were big. In fact, they were very big. His initial approach involved ‘doing something that would prove mankind could become a multi-planetary species.’”
The Elon Musk Method is unique in that Randy Kirk gathers up a lot of the early influencers in Elon’s circles as he attacked first the banking industry, then the space industry, the automobiles, and moved along to power and transportation infrastructures. Randy captures the essence of what drives Elon, and this gives us valuable insight into what has become one of the most influential people of our time.
