I think we need to distinguish between inventor (literally building new things themselves) vs executor (making stuff happen that would not have happened otherwise, or least not as quickly).

I think Elon falls much more into the second category, which I agree is not really like Tony Stark, but I think still provides a ton of value to society. I think there's a real argument to be made that he is the reason we have dropped cost per pound of payload to orbit by over half with reusable rockets, even if he himself didn't invent the functionality.

Oh, he deserves plenty of credit. He seems to be quite good at, at least, certain aspects of running a business, and happens to be interested in some fun and/or useful things, which is nice.

But he's not a super-genius, and given how flighty he can be, when he announces various Grand Visions, it's wise to take a wait-and-see approach. His big mouth probably ought to have landed him in quite a bit of legal trouble, too, except that it's so much harder for the justice system to deal with rich people than poor people.

It's not that he's uniquely awful among successful business dudes, since much of the above is true about many of them—his PR and superfans are just... grating.

Third category: Owner. Inventors invent things. Executors help them do so. Owners, the Edisons of the world, are the people with the property interest in the invention. They are the ones who get to deploy and use inventions within their business.

Edison wasn't necessarily an inventor either.

That said if you're a patron of inventors then you are an inventor. If you can manage the pain of failing and failing and failing, then in my book you're creative and a co-inventor.

Which is why the Steve Jobs analogy might work better than Edison.

Henry Ford seems an apt comparison. "Industrialist and business magnate", from Wikipedia's Henry Ford article, seems to pretty much cover it. Though with less of a focus on making products affordable for the normal person (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a difference in priorities).

That still makes him a pretty big deal, of course.

Yeah, Musk, Ford, Jobs, and Edison are all a big deal regardless of their role in actually inventing technology. I think Jobs is the most appropriate analog because he also has a public perception as being the person who created the tech which isn't really accurate. I'm not sure Ford had that reputation and Edison was more hands on.

It is also probably worth nothing that they all had another trait in common. They were all notorious assholes for various reasons.

Yeah, sorry, should have included that in my other post, but I do agree that Jobs is a decent analog, too. Similar public profile, sort-of similar reputation, though Jobs wasn't as prone to strident, public bullshitting.