What young innovators can learn from Elon Musk: Don Pittis

By some measures, Elon Musk has never invented anything. And yet the president of Tesla and SpaceXhas inspired a young generation of business and engineering students smitten by his glamorousprofile andapparent success.

The question is whether students captivatedbythelarger-than-lifeentrepreneur'sprojects can learn fromMusk's method of turning wild ideas into businesses, thereby helping reinvigoratethe Canadian and globaleconomies.

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There is no question that the billionaire businessman is an object of fascination.

University clubs and associations around the world hold him up as a model, including at Queen's in Kingston, Ont., whereMusk began his undergraduate education.

After two years enrolled in a Queen's commerce program, Musk, aSouth African native whose mother's family farmed inSaskatchewan, moved on to a U.S. university. But Queen's has betterbragging rights thanM.I.T., where Muskquit after only two days to start his first serious business venture Zip2, selling his stake four years later for $22million US.

"He's not a perfect person, but he's certainly inspiring," says third year Queen's engineering student Marnus Coetsee,whose family also hails from South Africa."I'm not trying to be ElonMusk inany sense, but I will certainly listen to what he says to help and inspire me to achieve things I thought were never possible."

WaterloopHyperloop

Along with business student ArthurCockfield,Coetseeleads the 40-member Queen'sHyperloopDesign Team. And Queen's is not unique.

Universitiesacross Canada have teams(including the award-winningWaterloop no points for guessing) joininguniversityteams from the U.S., Australia, Japan, the Netherlands and Spain.

All that brainpower iscontributing toa projectproposed by Musk in 2013to make a low-frictionhigh-speed vacuum tube train that will travel faster than airplanes, a schemethat critics have fallen overthemselves to declare will never work.

The students are undaunted, and Patti Derbyshire, Calgary-based founder of Torch Motorcycles and mentor toyoung entrepreneurs, says the wildness of Musk's ideas is part of his appeal.

Not new, revolutionary

There were electric cars before Tesla, batteries before the Powerwalland theGigafactory, solar panels before Solar City and rocket launches before Musk's private sector space companySpaceX. The idea of vacuum tube transportationstretches back a century before Musk proposed theHyperloop as an open-source business venture.

Musk's magic as an innovator and entrepreneur is to make crazy ideas seem like practical business ventures.

"We love those things because they play on our imagination," says Derbyshire.

Like any leading-edge entrepreneur only moreso because of his risky projects and the glare ofmedia attentionMusk's ventures always seem on the verge of blowing up,sometimes literally. But as with previous innovators, from James Watt to Alexander Graham Bell to Steve Jobs, Muskbuilds on existingtechnologybut stands as a Zeitgeist, a spirit of the times, leading others forward.

Many scoffed at the early Telsa. Now the company's biggest threat is a flood of competition from established automakers.

Companies around the world, including in Russia,have announcedHyperloop plans.

SpaceXhas given private sector space startups new credibility, including Canadian satellite company Kepler Communications,formed by a group of former University of Toronto students thatrecently got millions of dollars in private sector funding.

KeplerCEO Mina Mitrycredits Musk with wrenchingspace technology out of the hands of giant corporations where, he says, smart young people would rather not work.

It is easy to dismiss Musk as a meregrandstander, especially after his most recent plan to colonize Mars. That said, coming from Musk the idea got huge media attention, including the entire science section in last week's Economist magazine.

Hyperloopto closed loop

Derbyshiresays Musk'sspecial talents include looking beyond himself to try to solve global problems, and motivating other smart people.

"The payoff isn't always money," she says, pointing to the altruistic impetus for so many of Musk's visionary schemes. And she says that in the business of innovation, coaxing support from financial backers is an essential part of the job.

"When Tesla was faltering, Elon Musk went back to those people and madethose people believe again that a further investment would get that invention over the line," says Derbyshire.

Derbyshire,Chair of Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Social Innovation at Calgary's Mount Royal University, says the lessons learned from the Tesla and SpaceXboss go far beyond Hyperloop and space.

Salesmanship, tenacity, belief in your ability to succeed, thinking outside the box, risktaking, doing what at first blush might seem impossible, all whileaiming products at the right consumer group thatwill eventually pay the bills, are essential tools of anyentrepreneur, she says.

One of her students, Paul Shumlich,graduated in April and already has funding for a major expansion of his startup Deepwater Farms, ascheme developed as a student to provide eight key fresh ingredients year-round to Calgary chefs.

Motivated partly by environmental concerns, his growing method uses water in a closed loop from fish production to fertilize organic herbs and vegetables, which in turn cleanthe water for the fish. He has customers for the fish and the greens.

Shumlich'sinspiration? ElonMusk, whoseexample he says directed him toward sustainable, human-centred design.

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