Elon Musk explains how anyone can learn to be innovative

How do you create innovative intuition in those that work for you? I mean, you're famous for trying to gain efficiencies, create better processes, pushing.

To.

Try to gain those not just efficiencies, but effectiveness. So how do you, Is it possible, can you build this innovative intuition in a person?

Well, I think it is possible to learn to be innovative. You know, a lot of times for any given thing you have to say, did you try? This may sound obvious, but actually try like you, if somebody might wonder, well, can I be innovative? Well, have you tried? Just try thinking of interesting ideas. I mean, I do find a good source of innovation is if you read, if you read about a whole bunch of fields you can cross fertilize ideas from one field into another. And so you can Synthesize. Take say SpaceX and Tesla. The automotive industry is very good at manufacturing. In terms of manufacturing complex machines at volume, the automotive industry is the best. Now the rocket industry, space industry is very good at advanced materials and making things very light. And so taking advanced materials and mass optimization concepts from the space industry, applying it to automotive, and taking automotive mass manufacturing techniques and applying it to space was kind of like superpower.

But that's interesting because when you think about it, when you're talking about innovating, though, and you said people can try, that means you have to be willing to let them fail.

Yes.

And so where do you draw the line between recklessness and being overly cautious?

No, if you're not failing at least some of the time, you're not trying hard enough. You have to fail some of the time. So, you know, it's more like a batting average. Somebody should have a good batting average, but nobody bats a thousand. But if somebody bats zero all the time, I mean, okay, you know, you've got to take them off.