At Tesla’s ‘We, Robot’ event last week, Elon Musk showcased a driverless taxi, van and his latest humanoid robots. For his efforts, he won widespread sneers and a 9% drop in Tesla’s share price. The event and the reaction to it illuminated the sorry state of our innovation culture.
Innovation raises productivity, which in turn lifts living standards. In the UK, productivity and wages have flatlined since 2008. So, if we want a pay rise, we must unleash breakthrough innovation. However, outside of a few areas, such as AI and biomedicine, the outlook looks none too rosy.
Why? There are many well-rehearsed causes, such as low R&D investment, overbearing regulation and universities prioritising right-thinking views over knowledge and open debate. The dogma of Net Zero hasn’t helped, either: it has brought the UK the highest electricity costs in the world, the deindustrialisation of steelmaking and the North Sea, and preparations for power cuts.
What gets less airtime are the intangible cultural forces that restrain innovation. Three cultural mindsets that would help lift the gloom are an optimistic perspective, ambitious visions and a leaning towards action.
Informed optimism
To set the stage for breakthrough innovation, we must revive the conviction that a better world is still possible. And that to achieve real progress, we must challenge the status quo and open up different ways of thinking about the future. Breakthroughs happen when ideas flow freely, and conventions are tested. Innovation happens ‘when ideas can meet and mate’, as the science writer Matt Ridley succinctly puts it.
It’s been cool to be pessimistic for decades. What’s new is how, despite rhetoric about growth, the educated classes deny the evidence of progress that exists. As Steven Pinker points out, ‘Intellectuals hate progress… intellectuals who call themselves “progressive” really hate progress.’ We seem stuck in the present, veering from crisis to crisis. The past is often portrayed as dark and prejudiced, while the future is to be feared. To the extent that any visions of the future are widely shared, they are limited to environmental armageddon and social chaos unleashed by populism.
Besides his political journey from supporting Obama to endorsing Trump, what also seems to rile Musk’s critics is his long-term and positive perspective on the future. During his presentation last week, he framed the slated vehicle and robot releases in the context of their enormous benefits for society: ‘With [robotic] autonomy, you get your time back. It’ll save lives, a lot of lives, and prevent injuries… It’s going to be a glorious future.’
Cynics see Musk’s ‘We, Robot’ vision as utopian fluff aimed at propping up Tesla’s share price. This is definitely part of the picture, but they miss his genuine desire to play a part in building a better future. Such ambitious thinking is now viewed as odd or naive, if not sinister – a sad state of affairs.
Bold ambition
Innovation needs more than a positive stance toward the future; it is driven by inspirational and vivid goals – and backed by conviction. Musk is the master of these Moonshots – or Mars-shots in his case. From electrifying road transport to colonising Mars, he embodies ambition. His vision statement for the rocket company, SpaceX, is: ‘to make life multi-planetary by establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars’.
Last week, he unveiled the long-awaited (and much delayed) Cyber Cab, a futuristic autonomous or ‘Robo’ taxi, with no steering wheel and wireless charging. He hinted at robot-operated car valet centres and the opportunity for entrepreneurs to run small fleets of cabs, much like ‘shepherds tend to their flocks’. Musk also showed utopian visuals of future cityscapes with car parks converted into leafy green space. In addition, he demonstrated the latest prototypes of Tesla’s Optimus robot assistants, which will ‘walk among us’, serve drinks and dance. It was a clear, comprehensive and compelling view of ‘an age of abundance the likes of which almost no one has envisioned’.
OK, he might only deliver some of it. Still, the point about visions is that they motivate and steer innovation teams over multiple product cycles towards a ‘North Star’ that might never be fully reached – but still results in great accomplishments.
Action orientation
Bold visions are critical precursors to bold breakthroughs, but as Thomas Edison famously underscored, innovation is ‘99 per cent perspiration’. It takes bags of experimentation, risk-taking, grit and hard graft. Learning through failed experiments is central, but these setbacks usually take place behind the closed doors of the research lab and design studio.
To his credit, Musk displays these tendencies not just in the privacy of his labs, but out in front of the public. SpaceX’s test flights have gone from disastrous explosions to the graceful descent of a giant booster rocket into the arms of a launchpad tower.
I don’t buy into Musk’s politics, visions or business practices, but I do admire the level of this ambition, if not the content of his vision. Even if we differ with him, we should welcome his and, more importantly, other competing big ideas to help us envisage and debate the future we want – and ready ourselves to achieve it
Kevin McCullagh is speaking at the Battle of Ideas Festival on Sunday 20 October. For tickets to the Festival, with a special 20% discount for CapX readers, use the code CAPX24 at checkout or visit this link to book.
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