Elon Musk-前五章小结

SUMMARY

Born in 1971, Elon Musk grew up in South Africa. As a boy with compulsion to read, He plowed through fiction books and came to see man’s fate in the universe as a personal obligation. Almost from his early days,he dreamed of a place that would allow his personality and dreams to flourish.

Fortunately, he reached Canada at age 17 and embarked on his college life. College suited Musk. He had some truly big ideas and showed his passion for electric cars, solar energy and rocket.

Arriving in U.S in his twenties, He started up Zip2—a searchable directory of business online---at Silicon Valley. It proved to be a remarkable success but he also learned his lessons. Luckily, he came out of the dot-com tumult with cash in his pockets after Zip2‘s acquisition by Compaq.

The sale of Zip2 infused Musk with a new brand of confidence.He plowed money into a finance start-up --X.com (later rebranded as PayPal), which revealed a great deal about Musk’s creativity, relentless drive,confrontational style, and foibles as a leader. As a growing number of people questioned Musk’s decision-making at the company in the face of crises, Musk suffered the ordeal of losing the title of CEO.

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一点理解

看完前几章，Musk在初创时遭遇的种种困难甚至是背叛。原因几何？

天才注定孤独，曲高和寡。回顾Musk的Zip2和PayPal的创业经历，事实上能够踏上Musk的节奏，理解他的想法，并肩展望宏图的人还是极少数。这客观上注定了Musk与众人在想法理念上的分歧，这种分歧是原则性的分歧，势必造成在管理层的理念不一致。

Musk身上所展露的才华，先见，拼命，专注难能可贵。他在zip2和PayPal的崛起其实都是得益于他对于事物发展趋势极其敏锐的先见之明。他抓住了先机，辅以“Do or die but never give up”的拼劲，大步领跑。但他也有自己的短板，就是在与人相处方面，在Zip2没有担任CEO让他因为不能控制公司未来方向而感到焦虑。在读Zip2一章的时候，已经有些预感，以其性格，即使出任CEO也会出现问题，果不其然，等他在PayPal成为CEO时，竟然戏剧化地出现两次coup，甚至在第二次，人还在飞机上就被董事会罢黜。针对Musk的诋毁声音四起。竞争的残酷和激烈，管理层的勾心斗角固然是一方面，但是Musk也有自己的原因。

Musk’s traits as a confrontational know-it-all and his abundant ego created deep, lasting fractures within his companies.While Musk consciously tried to temper his behavior, these efforts were not enough to win over investors and more experienced executives. At both Zip2 and PayPal, the companies’ boards came to the conclusion that Musk was not yet CEO material.

个人再优秀、再有才，也只是达到了independence,如果要成就更大的成功，就需要提升到interdependence.也就是学会如何与他人合作，如何实现团队的synergy，如何了解别人的想法，实现Win-Win。这些都是Musk初创经历带给我们的思考，也是我们每个人mindset实现提升的一个重要的点。

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字词

1、doom-and-gloom talk / boom and busts

2、Come off 的用法：

Come off 在文中多次出现：Musk coming off like a control freak / Musk comes off asa much more polarizing figure./ Musk can come off asshy and borderline awkward. / Muskcomes off much morelike Thomas Edison than Howard Hughes

拓展下come off用法：

①Something comes off = successful or effective.成功;奏效(=文中还出现pull off这个词也是表示成功做)

例：It was a good try but it didn't really come off.这是一次好的尝试但未真正奏效。

②someone comes off worst/ best 结果(最差、最好)

例：Some Democrats still have bitter memories of how they came off worst during the investigation.

③ 'come off it' 别胡扯 

3. 相信：

① buy an idea or a theory = believe and accept； 

例：I'm not buying any of that nonsense.

② buy into sth ；

例：I bought into the popular myth that when I got the new car or the next house, I'd finally be happy.

③ I ‘d subscribed to a lot of this type of thinking until that first visit to Must Land .