Elon Musk: To Advance Tech, Reward Innovation—Even in Big Companies and Government

Here's Elon Musk explaining how to advance technology in big companies and government.

“If you want to advance technology, you've got to recruit the world's best engineers and then create an environment that enables them to be as innovative as possible.

You need to really reward and encourage innovation and punish lack of innovation.

It's got to be both, stick and carrot. Ideally, more carrot than stick.

In a lot of companies, you have a risk-reward asymmetry, where bold moves are punished if they go wrong.

But keeping your head down is not punished. That's not good. That will result in a very conservative outcome.

It has to be a requirement that there is significant advancement, and simply the lack of doing something significant is bad.

Big companies just become really conservative over time. Really, the government is a company in the limit. The government is the biggest company.”

Air Force Space Pitch Day, November 5, 2019