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Elon Musk and SpaceX Steven Muegge and Ewan Reid ended up spending the rich guy's money for two years, and then the rich guy gets bored and shuts the thing down” (p. 108). Musk nonetheless persisted, spending his own money. A second example was Musk’s commitment to persevere. Musk vowed to continue despite three failed test launches and severe time and cost overruns, declaring “I will spend my last dollar on these companies. If we have to move into Justine's parents' basement, we'll do it” (pp. 198-199). He made confident statements to employees and the public after each setback. “It took six years—about four and a half more than Musk had once planned—and five hundred people to make this miracle of modern science and business happen” (p. 203). The fourth test launch finally succeeded in 2008, when “SpaceX simply did not have enough money to try a fifth flight” (p. 200). “When the launch was successful, everyone burst into tears” (p. 203). Musk told Diamandis & Kotler (2015, p. 122): “Even if the probability of success is low, if the objective is really important, it’s worth doing.” A third example was making declarations about a new paradigm in the space industry. Musk declared that SpaceX would do things differently, and insisted that massive cost reduction was both necessary and possible. Tom Mueller explained: “People thought we were crazy. At TRW, I had an army of people and government funding. Now we were going to make a low-cost rocket from scratch with a small team” (p. 116). “The whole situation was ludicrous. A start-up rocket company had ended up in the middle of nowhere trying to pull off one of the most difficult feats known to man” (p. 137). Musk persevered and succeeded. By 2015, “SpaceX spent $2.5 billion to get four Dragon capsules to the ISS, nine flights with the Falcon 9, and five flights with the Falcon 1. It's a price-per-launch total that the rest of the players in the industry cannot comprehend let alone aspire to” (p. 247). Musk (2017) detailed the SpaceX Mars vision of humans as a multi- planetary species: “As we show that this is possible and that this dream is real–it is not just a dream, it is something that can be made real–the support will snowball over time.” A fourth example was making declarations that SpaceX would remain privately held to pursue its ambitious goals of making humans an interplanetary species. Musk wrote a 2013 letter to SpaceX employees about the timing of going public (p. 260), and made consistent statements about staying private: “For those who are under the impression that they are so clever that they can outsmart public market investors and would sell SpaceX stock at the ‘right time,’ let me relieve you of any such notion.” Zubrin (2013) writes: “At SpaceX, initially all–and still a significant fraction today–of the funds spent have been Musk’s. In short, SpaceX spends money as like it is its own–because much of it is” (pp. 57-58). Musk (2017, p. 57) writes: “The main reason I am personally accumulating assets is in order to fund this. I really do not have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multi-planetary.” Consistent with the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring, Musk made unambiguous discursive and rhetorical acts regarding intentions to make change. Musk’s declarations were about building a launch vehicle (and later the SpaceX system) with private funds, persevering despite set-backs, doing things differently, and remaining privately-held. Musk’s declarations shaped the interpretations of stakeholders about the value and meaning of SpaceX activities and intent for change. Discussion Our research problem was the identification and description of the NewSpace entrepreneuring activities of Elon Musk using the framework and constructs of the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring. Our solution was a set of seventeen examples of entrepreneuring as emancipation: six examples of Musk seeking autonomy as an impetus for entrepreneurship, seven examples of authoring to enact change, and four examples of making declarations about change-creating intent. Admittedly, these examples may provide an incomplete and partial view of Musk and SpaceX. Nonetheless, we argue that our work here is insightful for theory and practice. In the paragraphs that follow, we discuss and position (1) the results of this case, (2) the implications about the emancipation perspective, and (3) the broader implications about understanding entrepreneurship and innovation. Our case results, interpreted through the lens of the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring, portray Musk as driven to action by seeking escape from perceived constraints: space had become boring, tech companies addressed low-impact problems, successful founder-entrepreneurs lost control of their companies, launches required Russian launch vehicles, humansPDF Image | TIM Review 2019
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