Elon Musk is a Modern Henry Ford

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, is commonly known as “the Henry Ford of today’s time.” Both iconic men, Ford and Musk, are undoubtedly similar ? both are known for working from an engineer’s mindset rather than a strictly business-oriented one. Henry Ford and Elon Musk show similarities through their business practices, anti-union laws, and innovations.

Henry Ford’s business practices could be easily described as an outlier for his time. Elon Musk has followed in Henry Ford’s footsteps for the way he runs Tesla Motors.

Just like Henry Ford, Elon Musk is known for having an engineer’s mindset toward his business. Both men are recognized for having affirmative public relations. Henry Ford focused on advertising to the everyday person as well as his worldly known “big announcements.” Elon Musk matching Ford’s public relations efficiently uses social media and spectacle as his two main sources for advertisement. Even though Tesla was not founded until 100 years after Ford was, the two have very similar advertising strategies. These strategies could even be more closely compared to one another as if the same person was over them.

The two men, Henry Ford and Elon Musk, appear to say almost identical things to say about labor unions. While Henry Ford worked as hard as he could to hold onto his best labor, Musk is worldly known for running companies with a high level of worker burnout. Henry Ford seemed to have been more of a realist about management failures than many people during is time or even during today’s time. Sadly, this view did not negate his anti-union view. Of Henry Ford’s numerous noted faults, the worst possible known one was his use of strong-arm tactics against union representatives when his personal security team attacked the United Auto Workers union with clubs. During this gruesome attack, the police just stood by and watched. Thankfully, Elon Musk’s anti-union views do not go as far as Henry Ford due to the times being different today.

Both men, Henry Ford and Elon Musk, were not the creators of pioneering technology or manufacturing approaches as they were the implementers. Along with being the implementers, you could say they were the popularizers and the harvesters of other people’s talents. For example, you could say while the implementation of moving assembly lines in Henry Ford’s factories was basically all down to Ford, the idea itself seems to have originated with others at the company ? Clarence Avery, Charles E Sorensen, Peter E Martin, and C Harold Wills, reportedly. Elon Musk’s efforts to centralize, automate, and vertically integrate manufacturing at Tesla and SpaceX makes for a similar situation to Henry Ford during his times. Musk certainly did not design the approaches in question, but he is pioneering their uses on a large scale. In his industries, this brought down costs and dampen supplier risk in fast-changing industries.

Henry Ford and Elon Musk show similarities through their business practices, anti-union laws, and innovations. Both iconic men are known for working from an engineer’s mindset rather than a strictly business-oriented one. This is the reason Elon Musk is referred to as “the Henry Ford of today’s time.”

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