I despise Oracle as much as the next guy but if I were in Elon’s shoes I’d want Ellison on my board. The car business is tough, really tough. At one point the database business was really tough. Ellison achieved a near monopoly. Despite our views on the quality his software. Tech people were not his customers, CIO’s were. He gave them exactly what they wanted.
Ellison is shrewd, not stupid. Churning out shit cars would be stupid. Helping Elon cut waste and increase sales would be shrewd. Perhaps Ellison, if anything, could temper Elon’s boundless optimism and pet projects.
The retort here might be that people who have a track record of being "good at business" are good at all business. I personally don't buy that. I think too much executive decision-making is guesswork based on pattern-matching to prior experience for that to hold; if you have no prior experiences with a matching pattern, you're no more or less qualified than the next smart person making it up as they go.
Well now we’re just tossing back and forth our own biases and hypothesis. I understand your point. It makes sense. Not sure I agree.
The only thing I would add is, cars are big purchases for people. Oracle was a big purchase for CIO’s. Don’t forget for a second that Oracle was sold to a person. Talk to some Oracle sales people about this. I think you’ll find it similar to car sales in many ways.
are you buying a battery-backed electric power storage substation?
didn't think so..
tesla isn't just about cars
which isn't to say i like musk or ellison
Meanwhile, Ellison adds nothing I can see in terms of manufacturing and and little in terms of adult leadership.
I would argue that the ideal director in terms of complementary skills would be somebody like Tim Cook (even though Tim himself would probably be too likely to have conflicts of interest to serve).