1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.

2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.

3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.

4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted.

5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.

This is a great biography of Elon Musk, the entrepreneur of Tesla and SpaceX by Walter Isaacson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for biographies, former Director of CNN and editor of prestigious journals. The book follows chronologically the life of Elon Musk, from infancy to 2023, in a through investigative and insightful list of chapters.

The author of the book, Walter Isaacson, is world class in how he manages to cover the biography of someone, keeping it captivating for the reader and staying neutral. Isaacson wrote several biographies, and the one on Musk taking two years of research.

It was insightful to read the principles behind the rise of Musk’s companies, his determination and all tribulations in building his entrepreneurial life. Many colleagues and family members were interviewed, but the central piece remains Musk.

Elon Musk is clearly with an Asperger syndrome, which make understandable his total focus on pure engineering, manufacturing process and product design, and disregard for human emotions, constantly pushing the team and giving impossible timelines.

Nevertheless, his vision is grand, from electric cars and batteries, to solar panels, rockets, satellites, boring company, twitter, neuralink, AI. He tried a lot and succeeded much, but not always.

It was impressive to see Musk’s desire to understand the process, ability to motivate people, ambition, hard work (with little time for family), serial entrepreneurship and desire for total control.

This is captivating, well-written, well-researched, well-thought, balanced biographies of one the most influential entrepreneurs of our planet.