Does Elon Musk Have a Strategy?

During Elon Musk’s dramatic, sometimes pugnacious, occasionally baffling campaign to acquire Twitter, we heard many of the same questions from both his followers and his critics. Why did he want to buy the company in the first place, and what was he planning to do with it? Will he make a lot of money or will he lose all of it? Many questions simply boiled down to: “What is he thinking?!” Or, put another way, is Musk out there just winging this, or does he have a strategy? And if so, what is the Musk strategy?

We can all learn a lot — both good and bad — from Musk’s other businesses: Tesla, SpaceX, Hyperloop, OpenAI, The Boring Company, and NeuraLink. Based on our research and teaching on strategy for innovation, technology, and growth, we see (some) method to the madness. Musk’s strategy can be characterized by…