
While others have certainly suggested similar ideas, both in
sci-fi stories and in sci-fact forums, Musk’s announcement, if anything, gives
the public a slight insight into how a corner of his brain functions.
He never seems to stop trying to solve problems, and the problems he endeavors to solve are always in the big-time. I myself am not too surprised about this. After all, the guy is physics-educated – he holds a bachelor’s degree in the subject from the University of Pennsylvania. And as he told me in a recent interview, “physics essentially evolved a framework of thinking that was very effective for coming to correct answers that are not obvious.” Not obvious indeed.
He never seems to stop trying to solve problems, and the problems he endeavors to solve are always in the big-time. I myself am not too surprised about this. After all, the guy is physics-educated – he holds a bachelor’s degree in the subject from the University of Pennsylvania. And as he told me in a recent interview, “physics essentially evolved a framework of thinking that was very effective for coming to correct answers that are not obvious.” Not obvious indeed.
So while others are concerned about how to make a better
mousetrap, Musk is focused on how to move that mouse and its trap across
hundreds of miles in about the time it takes others to watch an episode of The
Big Bang Theory. He teased that he won’t be dedicating much time (if at any) to
the Hyperloop project, because he has to focus his energies and efforts on his
two companies. But I can’t help but wonder if he has something really magical
up his sleeve with this idea and hasn’t already commissioned a corner of one or
more of his enterprises to analyze it, at least clandestinely.
So speaking of corners of minds, machines and megacorps,
here’s a snippet of my chat with Musk. Stay tuned for the full version of the
interview in APS News this fall, where Musk talks about first principles, being
a nerd and why he doesn’t like MBAs.
Alaina G. Levine: How do you approach business problems
right now? Does your physics and your mathematics background help you look at
business problems maybe in a different way, or think about them via a different
process?
Elon Musk: It’s helpful to study physics, because the math
that’s in the business stuff is so easy compared to physics. I remember I was
in an advanced securities analysis class and they were teaching people what
matrix math is. I was like wow, ok. If you can do physics math then business
math is super easy. Probably a lot of people in the sciences front sell
themselves short on this front. Because they’re actually way better than they
think they are at this stuff. And I think just generally taking a physics
framework to think about any problem, it’s a generalized problem-solving
method, that can be applied to the economic world as well as the physical
world.
L: Having studied math and physics myself, I always found
that I would look at a business problem like a bifurcation tree and think about
things 4 or 5 or 6 moves ahead. Do you have this as well, and if so, do you
think you got this from studying physics?
M: Yeah, I think in general you always want to try to think
about the future, try to predict the future. You’re going to generate some error
between the series of steps you think will occur versus what actually does
occur and you want to try to minimize the error. That’s a way that I think
about it. And I also think about it in terms of probability streams. There’s a
certain set of probabilities associated with certain outcomes and you want to
make sure that you’re always the house. So things won’t always occur the way
you think they’ll occur, but if you calculate it out correctly over a series of
decisions you will come out significantly ahead…
L: So that’s kind of how you’re thinking on a day-to-day
basis, would you say?
M: Yeah, I think of the future as branching probability
streams.
L: Do you think there’s any down side to having studied
physics or being a physicist in your position and in your industries?
M: Definitely not. I encourage everyone to do it. The
difficulty is that physics is usually so badly taught in high school and even
in junior high… There’s too much of the teaching of the tools and not enough of
the “why the hell are we learning this in the first place?”
L: When you hire people, what are some of the top qualities
or characteristics, aside from the technical know-how, that you look for in an
employee?
M: In SpaceX, we’re obviously trying to advance the state of
rocket technology with the ultimate goal of establishing a self-sustaining
civilization on Mars. So in order to do that, we’ve got to hire people who are
going to be really good at coming up with innovative solutions for all the
elements of a rocket. We’ll look for
evidence of exceptional ability, [for example]. The grades are one assessment,
but it’s certainly possible for someone to game the system in college and pick
the right classes and get a 4.0 and neglect everything else. So grades are one
element that could suggest exceptional ability, but often more important is
what someone has done in international competitions. If someone won a national
science fair or created some amazing bit of electronics or software as a
teenager, something like that shows initiative, innovation and exceptional
technical capability. That’s what I’m looking for on the engineering side.
-Alaina G. Levine
_____________________________________________________________________
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Alaina Levine on location at an American Le Mans auto race. | Photo by Prachi Patel |
© 2013, Alaina G. Levine
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