How to build the next Tesla

Don’t.

You can’t build the next Tesla, because that spot is already taken. It’s normal (and healthy) to aspire to the best brands. The danger is in misapplying the lessons of the aspirational brand. The lesson is not to copy the leader wholesale, but to create incremental value.

You can’t build the next Tesla, because there’s already a Tesla. Elon Musk set out to change the world. His mission? To accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles without compromise. So, the next Tesla would do well to set a different mission, and obsess over it the way Musk obsesses over his mission.

The alternative isn’t always to build something better. It could be to build something else. The next Elon Musk won’t build a Tesla, but she might invent a remarkable EV that eliminates range anxiety.