And in all the successful cases he had massive contributions by others. He provided the money, which is huge in itself. The actual work eas done by others, and the fact the Musk fails to properly say so, and that his fanboys believe every single of his claims, truely makes him the Steve Jobs of 2020s we deserve.

Boeing probably has more and better engineers than SpaceX. Same with Toyota/Volkswagen compared to Tesla. Yet these companies simply cannot innovate. Talent (ability to do good work) is pointless without good leadership.

> the fact the Musk fails to properly say so

This is a lie.

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/15170727534756003...

> The failures are mine, the successes belong to others

It is a different kind of innovation so, only considering "disruptuon" as innovation is quite short sighted so. Espiecially since Christensen himself differentiates between disruptive and sustaining (?) innovation.

GM had a pretty good EV in the 80’s - then killed it. Literally - never sold them, only leased them and forced owners to cough them back up and destroyed them.

I have zero interest in owning a Tesla - their stance on right to repair and their customer service sucks, but without them there wouldn’t be near the activity around EVs as there is now. Like him or not, Elon pretty much single handedly embarrassed the rest of the auto industry to have to take EVs seriously by proving that yes, EVs can be not only useful but cool.

And VW and others would care about EVs because of the general awareness about climate change.

Yes and yes

>The actual work eas done by others, and the fact the Musk fails to properly say so,

Give me one instance where Musk denies the work of his friends and colleagues at SpaceX and Tesla please, because this post reek of bad sentiment and an awful take.

Because if you had ever watched a full, unedited interview with him you’d be too embarrassed to post what you just did. He’s a pretty humble guy.

One of the best interviews with him was the one he did with the Babylon Bee - you should watch it; it’s up on Youtube.

This is not true. He often mentions and emphasizes that the success is the work of his great teams. He also publicly acknowledged that he failed to do so in the past, but he is certainly doing it now.

Success is measured using market share not market cap or net worth of the CEO.

Tesla accounted for 1.3% of all cars sold in the world during 2021.

Stock price, net worth and number of synchopants getting on their knees are like a voting machine, market share is a weighting machine.

When you use the right metric it becomes crystal clear who are te guys setting records at the weighting machine.

It's the usual quiet ones: Buffett, Gates, Brin&Page, Tim Cook.

Not to mention the GOAT. Rockefeller left Standard Oil at #1 in market share and here we are in 2022 the companies which were under the umbrella of Standard Oil are still at #1.

Your measure of market share is a reasonable one, as are the two I proposed being profit and creating and succeeding in entirely new markets.

They are new markets too, it's not rockets, it's reusable rockets at incredibly lower cost to orbit and new capacities to previous ones, it's space based communication networks that are again a serious generational leap ahead of whatever was before, it's the emergence of a serious replacement for ICE vehicles. In all these markets, his companies are the only market share! He owns these markets, because he created them, and is multiple years ahead of the rest of the world's highly motivated competitors.

I'm not detracting from the successes of the other guys you mentioned. But Musk can very reasonably be called the world's most successful businessman at the moment on multiple metrics.

It might be a competition between Musk and others, but it's the opposite utterly inept, which was the point - trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the OP per HN guidelines, while also keeping the discussion grounded in rational sanity.

All the stuff you mentioned brings zero benefits to the consumer. The consumer wants a steady improvement in their quality of life in the next 3 months or less, and then you go from there hopefully adding one more bit in the next 3 months and so on.

There is a reason why Musk BS doesn't find fertile ground in NYC and his cult is largely based in California. Quartely (4 * 3 = 12) reports were adopted because people want to have a clear understanding of how a public company is improving the American consumer's quality of life, and they want it every 3 months.

Tesla accounted for 1.3% of all cars sold in the world in 2021, these are rich people toys we are talking about. 1.3% in 20 years.

> He owns these markets, because he created them

Cars are cars, EV, hybrid, gasoline, diesel...whatever. If you are in the business of making cars the relevance of your company should be judged based on what's you market share in car manufacturing compared against everybody who are also in the business of making cars.

Mr. Musk took 20 years to get to 1.3%. That's 80 Quarters. 1.3% / 80 = 0.01625% per quarter. What are we even talking about...

By this time around the govt. was already threatning Gates and Rockefeller to put them in jail because they had 95% market share of Operative Systems and oil respectively.