Elon Musk Biography – A book review

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Overview

Out of about 20 top biographies, I read (see detailed list at the end of this article), Musk’s Biography is one of the top 5. It is as sincere as a biography can be, captures remarkable stories which some seem exclusive to this book, and is highly inspiring. Above all, it is an impressive reflection of one of the most intriguing, valuable exemplars the world can offer us and in many more fields than one would imagine.

A key-value point I could find in this biography, aside from a well-told story, piquant details, and valuable insights, was the deep understanding of some of the interesting differences between Musk and other well-known entrepreneurs and industry leaders. Figures like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos.

Bottom line

Highly recommended for anyone that can enjoy or benefit from a good biography. People looking for worthy exemplars, entrepreneurs, dreamers, and doers of all kinds can appreciate the positive inspiration.

Time Economy’s recommendation

Highly interesting and inspiring book and one of the best biographies one could read. It should be a must-read for leaders, those wishing to become leaders or develop an understanding of what true leadership is.

Alternatives

Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Jack Welch, Howard Schultz, and Tony Hsieh’s biographies are also excellent, well-written biographies that could appeal to a similar audience. Those biographies may offer a similar taste with some similar insight and inspiration for those that are more intrigued by fields less related to the future of humankind or transportation and can better relate to other highly interesting topics such as Apple and Amazon’s inception and evolvement, Management in general, coffee and Starbucks or happiness and shoes.

Comparison

Each biography could be as unique as life itself. It is always easier to relate to a biography if you are keen on the person or topics mentioned in the book. Having said that, this biography shares many important key lessons common to Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos biographies, and all three better be a must-read for anyone who is into creating a high scale or low-scale success in the world of business and technology or just learning from the experience of others.

The real difference between the 3 biographies are, of course, the people standing behind them, their stories, their life, their character, goals, and motivations, and it could be quite valuable to read all three biographies to learn from different types of leaders. If you do have to pick one, choose it by the person you can most relate to, whether it is Musk, Jobs, or Bezos, or the person you know the least of, so you would truly enrich yourself.

Best Value

No matter how you look at it, Musk’s biography is inspiring. It may inspire you if you are interested in investing in Tesla’s stock or if you are looking to buy a car or become an entrepreneur, but the real key value of Elon Musk’s biography is that in many aspects it is simply an inspiring human story regardless of our field of interest. Simply put, it is an inspiring human story.

Challenge Level

Though being an entrepreneur is not for everyone and poses quite a few challenges, this book gives quite a few examples of decision-making that can make life easier as well as coping with significant challenges. All in all, it is of course highly challenging to implement all the wonderful lessons that can be learned from this book, but there are more than enough that are surprisingly easy to adopt.

Time-sensitive: 4/5

The specific window of opportunity for reading Musk’s biography cannot be pointed out. Nevertheless, since it can be very inspiring and since I found it applicable to make some of these stories accessible to my 9 years old daughter as well as my 7 and 4 years old boys and my youngest boy is telling his kindergarten teacher and all his friends and family members that when he grows up he will be a friend of Elon Musk, I would recommend starting at a young age as there is a limited number of people that can be so inspiring and it is both important and valuable to expose young adults to as many figures like that as possible so each can relate to a figure of his choice or absorb from them all, be it  Marie Curie, Edward Jenner, Larry Sanger, Malinda and Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey, Helen Keller, Maria Montessori or Elon Musk.

There is a great advantage to being exposed to such a book when we are still a bit naive. Perhaps before learning about how complex it could be to establish, run a company, or just be a part of it. While in parallel, there is an advantage to being espoused to such a book after you have worked as part of one or more companies and you already understand how “things” work. This will make it 10 times more inspiring to see how staff can work and most probably should work.

Should you be interested in the 4-9 years old version I used as a bad-night story for my kids, you can find it in similar articles at the end of this article.

My youngest son which was most inspired by the story just built a spaceship made of magnets and said: “I think I am now ready to be 5 and I am also hard-working and diligent enough to be a friend of Elon Musk”. He also pointed out that when he is a grown-up he will be able to take us all in his real spaceship to wherever we would want. Perhaps he will…