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Elon Musk explains how anyone can learn to be innovative
“I think it’s possible to learn to be innovative. A lot of times for any given thing, you have to say, ‘Did you try?’ This may sound obvious, but actually try. Somebody might wonder, ‘Can I be innovative?’ Well, have you tried? Just try thinking of interesting ideas.”
To think of interesting ideas, Elon recommends reading:
“If you read about a bunch of different fields, you can cross-fertilize ideas from one field into another.”
He gives Tesla and SpaceX as an example of this:
“The automotive industry is very good at manufacturing. In terms of manufacturing complex machines at volume, the automotive industry is the best. While the space industry is very good at advanced materials and making things very light. So taking advanced materials and mass-optimization concepts from the space industry and applying it to automotive or taking automotive mass-manufacturing techniques and applying it to space is kind of like a superpower.”
Musk also points out that being willing to fail is an important part of innovation too:
“If you’re not failing at least some of the time, you’re not trying hard enough.”