《华尔街日报》专访马斯克：CEO们少看财务报表和PPT，多去工厂和了解客户！（附视频&摘要稿）
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特斯拉和SpaceX首席执行官埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）可谓是世界上最成功的公司领导人之一，他最近接受采访时透露了自己当好CEO的秘诀，包括尽全力打造好产品、从各个方面寻求负面反馈以及不要过度关注利润等。
马斯克周二在《华尔街日报》举行的CEO峰会上表示：“美国企业界的CEO们是否足够专注于产品改进？我认为没有。”在马斯克看来，CEO专注于产品改进至关重要，他们应该少花些时间关注财务方面的事情，而是花更多时间“努力让你的产品尽可能令人惊叹”。
马斯克还敦促CEO们经常反思，问问自己：“我们的产品是不是真的很棒？”答案可能是否定的，那么你能做些什么才能让它成为伟大的产品？”他说：“我真心地建议你们所有人去倾听意见，少花点儿时间开会，少花点儿时间在PPT演示文稿或财务报表上，把更多时间花在厂房里或者与顾客交流上。”
马斯克认为，CEO们的最终目标就是“要成为你生产的产品或所提供服务的绝对完美主义者，并从各个方面寻找负面反馈信息，不管他们是不是你的顾客。”
他还表示，即便一位高管本身并不擅长从事产品创新，但是这种技能是“可以学会的”，“并不是什么很神秘的东西”，“如果你只专注于利润，那么你就搞错了目标”。马斯克认为，美国公司现在最大的问题可能是，“有太多工商管理硕士(MBA)在运营公司”。
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What is wrong with American corporations? Elon Musk says too many M.B.A.s. are polluting companies’ ability to think creatively and give customers what they really want.
His comments criticizing M.B.A.s came amid a broader conversation about leadership before an online audience during The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council annual summit, where he also encouraged executives to step away from their spreadsheets and get out of the boardroom and onto the factory floor.
“I think there might be too many M.B.A.s running companies,” the Tesla Inc. chief executive said. “There’s the M.B.A.-ization of America, which I think is maybe not that great. There should be more focus on the product or service itself, less time on board meetings, less time on financials.”
Many business-school leaders shot back, saying that Mr. Musk’s comments don’t match the reality of what is taught in M.B.A. programs and that more students than ever who are pursuing the graduate degree are interested in entrepreneurship and tech rather than Wall Street.
“I have nothing but the utmost respect for Elon, but he’s wrong to focus the blame on M.B.A.s,” said Robert Siegel, a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “I think he’s got a strong element of truth of what leaders should be focused on, but he is completely off base talking about M.B.A.s.”
Elon Musk said he doesn't see corporate leaders focusing enough on product innovation, during WSJ's CEO Council.
Mr. Siegel said Stanford offers students a variety of business-school courses on product development and customer engagement. There are also opportunities for budding entrepreneurs to pitch their business plans for capital as well as to work with professors and other departments, such as the engineering school, to help launch their ideas, he added.
Glenn Hubbard, the former dean of Columbia Business School, said an M.B.A. gives entrepreneurs the foundation needed to succeed, including imagining a product for a customer’s needs, developing a strategy, putting together a financing plan and building a team.
“He is a visionary, but many CEOs do well at vision and execution with the benefit of an M.B.A., or with a strong team of M.B.A.s.”
"There should be more focus on the product or service itself, less time on board meetings, less time on financials.”— Elon Musk
Among the top 100 CEOs in the Fortune 500, roughly a third holds a master’s in business administration, according to the U.S. News Best Business School rankings. Five M.B.A. programs have trained more than one Fortune 100 CEO, including Harvard Business School, which counts JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief James Dimon and Lawrence Culp Jr. , the CEO of General Electric Co., among its alums, and Stanford, where General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra and Capital One Financial Corp. CEO Richard Fairbank went to business school.
Not all Fortune 100 CEOs with an M.B.A. attended a highly ranked program, the report says. For instance, Stephen Squeri, CEO at American Express Co., earned his degree from Manhattan College’s O’Malley School of Business.
Raj Echambadi, the dean of Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, questioned Mr. Musk’s assertion that CEOs shouldn’t be attuned to their company profitability, adding that an M.B.A. can give corporate leaders a holistic understanding of business, from the supply chain, operations and manufacturing to marketing, customer service and human resources.
“Do we really think that investor focus on financials is an MBA-education problem?” said Rich Lyons, the former dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “Do firms with fewer M.B.A.s on their boards and senior teams have shorter meetings? I’m skeptical. Might Musk’s rightful emphasis on product be more a function of the science-driven industry he’s in, as opposed to valid generalization?”
future of m.b.a. programs
Some critics of the M.B.A applauded Mr. Musk. Dan Rasmussen, a partner at investment firm Verdad Advisers in Boston, said he was delighted by Mr. Musk questioning the value proposition of business education. Mr. Rasmussen wrote a report published in 2019 in Institutional Investor that found M.B.A. programs don’t produce CEOs who are better at running companies when their performance is measured by stock-price return.
“What Musk is pointing out here is rewarding doers rather than focusing on airy concepts such as management,” Mr. Rasmussen said. “I’m in favor of a society that favors doing and action rather than pedigree. People devoted to the company might be better or equal to a star M.B.A. that got head-hunted into the company.”
This wasn’t the first time Mr. Musk or other tech leaders have criticized the M.B.A. In a 2013 interview with the American Physical Society, a nonprofit professional organization for people in physics-related industries, Mr. Musk said: “I hire people in spite of an M.B.A., not because of one.”
Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who started PayPal Holdings Inc. with Mr. Musk and others two decades ago, once said: “Never ever hire an M.B.A.; they will ruin your company.”Tesla is one of the most sought-after places to work for young graduates and many business-school students, according to Handshake, a student career-services website that college graduates use to look for work. For the past five years, the electric-car maker has consistently ranked among the top three employers receiving the most job applications
Jeff Bezos, the longtime head of Amazon.com Inc., has criticized M.B.A.s. in the past. But as the e-commerce retailer has grown over the past decade, it has become one of the biggest employers of M.B.A. graduates.
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk said he has moved to Texas, taking aim at Silicon Valley and becoming one of the highest-profile executives yet to leave California during the coronavirus pandemic.
He said relocating made sense with Tesla’s new factory being built in Texas. He lamented that California, in his view, had become complacent with its innovators.
Mr. Musk’s companies continue to maintain extensive operations in California, and other tech firms are expanding their presence there. Yet his decision to move underscores a growing discontent, particularly among wealthier tech professionals, with the cost of living in the state, a pre-pandemic real-estate crunch and clogged roads.
Taking up residence in Texas comes with personal benefits for Mr. Musk: The state doesn’t collect state income or capital-gains tax for individuals. The auto executive qualified this year for billions of dollars in stock-option compensation as part of a pay-package agreement, making him the second-richest person in the world.
During the spring, when Mr. Musk was sparring over coronavirus shelter-in-place orders that shut his factory near San Francisco, California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNBC he was “not worried about Elon leaving any time soon” and the state was committed to the car maker’s success. “We may not be the cheapest place to do business but we are the best place to do business,” Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, said. Silicon Valley remains home to some of the hottest companies— Airbnb Inc. and food delivery company DoorDash Inc. are poised for multibillion-dollar public listings this month and are both based in San Francisco.
Mr. Newsom’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Musk’s move.
Mr. Musk echoed that sentiment Tuesday, arguing the San Francisco Bay Area “has too much influence on the world.” That power is shifting, he said. “I think we’ll see some reduction in the influence of Silicon Valley.”
Mr. Musk made the comments from Texas during The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council annual summit in an interview with Editor in Chief Matt Murray.
Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist, moved to Austin this year. The city has become an attractive alternative to Silicon Valley for tech industry professionals. He wrote in a Journal opinion article last month that California has turned into a place where “bad policies discourage business and innovation, stifle opportunity and make life in major cities ugly and unpleasant.”
Two other prominent conservative venture capitalists, Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, have cited what they see as Silicon Valley’s liberal politics as reasons to relocate. Mr. Rabois said he is headed to Miami. Mr. Thiel has moved to Los Angeles.
California’s taxes underlie many of the complaints. Its personal income tax tops out at 13.3% for amounts over $1 million a year, the highest in the nation. Capital gains are taxed at a similar rate. Many who call the Bay Area home have expressed relief at the departure of tech professionals who have been blamed for driving up the cost of living and congesting the freeways.
Tesla’s new car plant, its first U.S. factory outside Silicon Valley, is slated to open in Austin next year. Mr. Musk’s rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, has operations in South Texas, leading Mr. Musk to spend a lot of time in the state. He filed paperwork in late October to move his personal foundation from California to Austin, according to local records. The move was previously reported by Bloomberg.
Mr. Musk likened California to a sports team with a long winning streak, saying “they do tend to get a little complacent, a little entitled, and then they don’t win the championship anymore.” California, he said, “has been winning for a long time. And I think they’re taking them for granted a little bit.”
Mr. Musk has spent much of his life in California, choosing Fremont, southeast of San Francisco, for Tesla’s first U.S. factory. He has owned houses in both southern California and the Bay Area.
Many are loath to declare an end to Silicon Valley. Prior predictions that the wealthy tech elite would flee en masse to low-tax states haven’t come true. Large employers like Google-parent Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. have been leasing more office space in the region recently, even during the pandemic.
And the Bay Area’s primacy as a headquarters for startups continues. During the pandemic—from April through early December—the region has been home to 26.6% of all U.S. early-stage startups receiving venture capital funding, according to data firm PitchBook. That is only slightly less than the 27.4% average since the start of 2017.
Mr. Musk broadly criticized government regulations as stifling startup creation and favoring monopolies or duopolies. He called for the government to “just get out of the way” of innovators.
Environmental regulations have buoyed his electric-car company. Tesla has so far this year earned $1.18 billion by selling government emissions credits to other auto makers.
Mr. Musk has criticized regulators in the past. He threatened to move Tesla’s operations out of California while sparring with authorities there in May, after local shelter-in-place orders required him to shut down his lone U.S. car factory as part of measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus. He criticized local officials at the time as “breaking people’s freedoms” by imposing the curbs.
The executive later filed a lawsuit against Alameda County, home of the Tesla factory, and defied local authorities by proceeding to reopen the plant, daring them to arrest him. The county eventually blessed the plant’s reopening and didn’t pursue an arrest.
Mr. Musk said last month that he had tested positive for Covid-19 after repeatedly playing down the risks of the illness.
TJ Nahigian, founder and managing partner at San Francisco-based venture firm Base10 Partners, said moving to San Francisco is now considered contrarian in tech circles. But he thinks the trend won’t always be so extreme.
“I believe the Bay Area will continue to flourish as the pre-eminent technology hub in the western world,” said Mr. Nahigian. “I think what could happen is the cost of living in San Francisco comes down, space becomes available, and a new crop of entrepreneurs come to the Bay Area as Covid starts to clear up.”
Mr. Musk’s critique of Silicon Valley comes despite a successful year for Tesla. The company said Tuesday that it would raise up to $5 billion through new sales of stock, the second time this year it is raising that amount of money to finance its expansion plans.
Mr. Musk said both Tesla and SpaceX retain large operations in California.
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