The Book of Elon

Thoughts

Good to have a collection of his ideas in one place.

I've come to appreciate manufacturing a lot more as I've read and studied engineering, and this book adds to that. I like Musk's idea of thinking of the factory as a product — the machine that makes the machine. The production system itself can be engineered, iterated on and improved just like the thing coming off the line.

Having also watched and read more about semiconductor manufacturing, that idea makes even more sense to me. ASML is probably the clearest example: the machines used to manufacture advanced semiconductors can be extraordinarily complex and impressive in their own right. Sometimes the technology required to make the product is as interesting as the product itself.

His approach to problem selection is probably one of the more useful ideas for me. Rather than just asking what is interesting to work on, think seriously about which problems or industries could have an outsized impact, then deliberately build capability in those areas. I like the idea of choosing a small number of important problems and going deep rather than just drifting toward whatever happens to be in front of you.

I also like the emphasis on agency. Rather than treating constraints, existing industries or conventional assumptions as fixed, the instinct is to ask what can actually be changed, rebuilt, deleted or approached differently.

Related to that, I like his algorithm: question the requirements, delete what does not need to exist, simplify and optimise, accelerate, then automate. It is something I want to keep in mind going forward, especially in engineering. From experience with projects, particularly group projects, it is easy to start doing a lot of work too early before the problem, direction or desired result is actually clear. Sometimes the work was never really required; the team just moved into building before spending enough time questioning, exploring and deciding what should actually be done.

Selected Highlights

Highlight here