2 minute readThe game-show Jeopardy correct answer to nearly every major business challenge question out there – including the global supply chain disruption – seems to be this.
Who is Elon Musk?
Equal parts namesake Nikola Tesla, P.T. Barnum, James Dean, Howard Hughes, the Pied Piper, and Forrest Gump, Elon Musk appears to work a day job that includes space, time, the grid, motion, power in several of its forms, energy, light, and at least two of the planets he believes humans can inhabit.
And this has what to do with the rest of us mortals who make investing in, designing, engineering, building, and marketing homes and communities our livelihoods?
Well, bear with us momentarily, and we’ll get there.
Musk makes news at every utterance, and society, business, and culture seemingly set themselves up as a behavioral reward system for his steps, missteps, and walk-backs. In this larger-than-life genius, us would-be geniuses get to vicariously choose money-is-no-object, you-only-live-once choices in Elon Musk style, just to see if they play. If they don’t, no worries.
Yesterday, a 180-degree turn on Tesla’s buying and accepting Bitcoin fit the pattern of a naif boldly opting for a “save humankind through technology,” only to discover – later – a darker unintended consequence.
Bloomberg Green correspondent Lionel Laurent has caught on to a Muskian world of feint and dodge vision, strategy, and mission mixed with an aim to make money. Three paragraphs above here frame a residential investment future beyond that which even Elon Musk has thoroughly and rigorously imagined. Transportation, the energy complex, community, and even the idea of home – identity, safety and security, well-being and prospering – all hang in the balance of forces of dynamism and urgency none of us quite grasp as we look toward and work on what’s ahead. Humbling. And at a moment when all business memes seem to point to Elon Musk, we’re reminded of another point of reference. Courage.
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