The management principles of the world’s most productive and polarizing person.

If America has returned to space, it is because Elon Musk wanted us to. If we drive electric cars down the sprawling, confused highways that Moses demanded, it is because Musk demanded it, too. Though we cannot entirely ignore the elegance of Moore’s Law or advancements in lithium-ion batteries, our present and future are the result of a single man’s blistering ambition, implacable desires, and accumulated power to an improbable degree.

For any person to have such power is uncomfortable for many, and Elon Musk tests the limits of our amenity more than most. He is a polarizing, controversial figure hated and loved, admired and reviled, considered both a genius and a fool.

Like a barricade of heavy weather, these appraisals – though they have their place – obscure a more fundamental reality. Elon Musk has played a founding role in companies valued around a combined $1 trillion. More significantly, he has revolutionized two vital industries, brute-forcing the automobile market into the electric era and galvanizing a new commercial space race. Along the way, he’s had a hand in mainstreaming digital payments, sparking the generative AI renaissance, and producing viable brain-computer interfaces. He is the most productive person of his generation and one of the most powerful people that has ever lived.