Next week, some of the biggest tycoons in the business world will gather in Montana for a two-day economic summit in Butte. The list of speakers is truly staggering, ranging from the CEO of Ford to the executive chairman of Google. But, to me, the most appealing attendee is Elon Musk, who is perhaps the most familiar name among my 20- and 30-something colleagues.
Musk is a pop star to those of us who follow the tech industry. He’s only 42, worth an estimated $2.7 billion and implements ideas often found in science fiction novels, a genre of which I’m a huge fan. He’s the inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.’s character Tony Stark in “Iron Man” and has made the life of the eclectic inventor and entrepreneur seem cool.
His latest idea, Hyperloop, is a grandiose plan for a transportation system that would send passengers across the country at 800 mph in capsules through aboveground tubes. It is a proposal reminiscent of how the Jetson family moved between rooms in the futuristic cartoon of my youth, or those green tubes on “Futurama” – yes, another futuristic cartoon. It has drawn its fair share of skeptics, but who cares?
After helping start PayPal, which he sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, Musk could have comfortably retired. Instead, he wanted to go to space. Instead, he invested in an electric car company, Tesla Motors, which has succeeded where others have struggled.
When Musk founded SpaceX and said he wanted to launch rockets, the idea was greeted with skepticism. His was the first commercial spacecraft to berth with the International Space Station.
While many of its competitors have struggled, Tesla has grown rapidly. Motor Trend named the Model S its car of the year and Consumer Reports awarded it a near-perfect score. Shares of the company are soaring and it plans on selling 21,000 vehicles in 2013. Earlier this year, Tesla paid back a $528 million government loan with interest nine years early. Meanwhile, its rival Fisker Automotive has struggled mightily and, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, “has laid off much of its staff and hired bankruptcy consultants.”
So, what makes Musk different? Where others have failed, why has he succeeded? In a recent Wired magazine piece, Joshua Kendall wrote about the common characteristic among modern-day tech titans, from the late Steve Jobs to Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer.
“These titans are united not only by their obsession with minutiae; they also seem to share the characteristics of obsessive-compulsive personality disorders,” Kendall wrote.
In other words, for better and worse, they are geared differently than the rest of us. They are obsessed with achieving goals and willing to devote 100-hour workweeks to reach them. Obsessives can thrive in an environment of innovation, but, as Kendall writes, they “have difficulty understanding themselves or other people.”
Musk wondered in an interview with Businessweek if 10 hours was an adequate amount of time to devote to a girlfriend. Yes, 10 hours. Peculiar traits in the smartest among us are nothing new. Ben Franklin, an American icon and inventor, was perhaps the most eccentric of our Founding Fathers and the list of his odd behavior is at once lengthy and debated.
Sen. Max Baucus is gathering many of this country’s greatest innovators at a small college in a small city at an event normally reserved for Silicon Valley or New York City crowds. At no cost, Montanans have the opportunity to listen to this generation’s obsessives – those who have changed the way we live now and shape the way it may look like in the future.
If you can attend, you should. For those who can’t, the event will be telecast live online at www.montanajobssummit.com.