No, it hasn’t gotten to this just yet, but we shouldn’t even be having this conversation.
The SEC’s decision to sue Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with the intention of barring him from serving as an executive or director not only of Tesla, but of any corporation under the jurisdiction of the SEC, was the height of folly. Do any of us, including the SEC commissioners involved, really believe that our society would have been better off with Elon Musk on the sidelines? Do they really think that anyone else could do the job of representing Tesla, or the future, better than Elon Musk?
Let’s be clear, there are a lot of smart people in Silicon Valley. But, most of them are not named “Elon Musk.” What we discovered over the weekend was that that name was worth at least $6 billion in value, and possibly a lot more, based on the fall in market capitalization on the day following the announcement of the SEC action. It’s hard to imagine very many other people whose suspension from work life would bring such a hit on the very next day. Yet, I suspect that very few of us are actually surprised. In our minds, Tesla is Musk, and without Musk, what is Tesla?
Far from being a Musk apologist or fanboy, I am arguing from a position of historical parallel and contemporary commonsense. I am not condoning his actions which might have misrepresented Tesla's situation, and possibly compromised investors, but we live at a time when misrepresentation on a much grander scale, including climate change, international relationships and the health of our economy, appears to be the name of the game at the very highest levels of our society and yet goes on without remark or approbation, to the extent that the case against Elon Musk appears to be ridiculous by Trump-era standards, despite the technicalities that might have been involved. To be honest, for most of us, Elon Musk does not appear to be the sort of person that we would choose to hang-out with, too intense, too ambitious, possibly narcistic. Yet, that is not the point here. What Musk brings to Tesla, and to us all, is the ability to weave a story that promises to free us from much of the political, health and climate consequences of fossil fuel dependencies, charm investors enough to generate the necessary capital, and then actually begin to deliver on that promise. Name three other individuals who you think could perform at a similar level. I don’t need to be willing to spend a weekend at the beach with him to be willing to acknowledge his gift, and the importance that it represents. He is simply too valuable to too many people to be sidelined so preemptively.
So, now that it appears as if Musk will remain as CEO, what should we hope for regarding his leadership role in the future? Yes, a new governance system is way overdue, as is also probably a new board to replace the one that allowed this situation to unravel in the way that it has. But, hopefully, this new governance system will address only the erratic variance in his public behavior without reducing his role as the face of the company. While the Financial Times has quoted one Managing Director from a VC investor in Tesla suggesting that Musk should remain a visionary but without an "investor-related focus,” I believe that this is bad advice. It pretends that this investor was himself indifferent to Musk’s vision and charisma when they invested in Tesla, which is hard to accept. More perceptive, I think, is the conclusion of a Morningstar automobile industry analyst admitting that without Musk, "Tesla is just a capital-intensive automaker burning cash with too much debt due soon.” In truth, the magic was Musk. The fact that he could actually build cars as technically and aesthetically impressive as Tesla has is just frosting on the cake. The real cake, however, was the Tesla story that Musk spun. If anything, Tesla cannot afford to separate Musk from the investment community if it has any chance of succeeding in the future. What he now needs to do, however, is to convince prospective investors that they are still investing in him, his energy and his dreams, and not in some faceless group of managers who merely know how to build cars.
Elon Musk is not only the face of Tesla, he is the face of the future. We need such faces; the Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, the Bill Gates, and … quick, name another, other than Elon Musk… Difficult, isn't it; that’s how singularly important he is. Frequently compared with Thomas Edison as the “wizard” of our age because of his curiosity and practicality, it’s important to recognize that it is not so much the technologies in play that have led to this association with the original wizard as it is the role of being the face of so many audacious ventures. After all, that is the exactly what Edison did for the incandescent light, electric power generation (AC), sound recording (the phonograph), and motion pictures, to name but a few of his ventures. In fact, Stanford Law School professor Mark A. Lemley has observed that "What Edison really did well, was commercialize the invention.” That same role is what Elon Musk is playing today for Tesla, for SpaceX, Solar City and The Boring Company. It's a vitally important role if these firms, and others, are to continue to pursue their audacious innovation paths into the future.
