HOME WORK-1

Part: a
Pick any One Successful & One Failed Project
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Part: b

Research on the leadership styles of Mr. Elon Musk. How he

developed his project, SpaceX, a successful project (hint: start
from his history towards it). What is your take on his project, do
analysis and provide recommendations?

FUMDAMENTALS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT (MSP-601)

SUBMITTED TO: MR. SHEHZAD AHMAD

(Project Manager / Sr. Assistant Professor)

SUBMITTED BY: SIJAL HABIB (03-398192-00)

M. BILAL AZAM (03-398192-00)
M. UMER SHAHI (03-398192-00)
SAMIULLAH AWAN (03-398192-00)

BAHRIA UNIVERSITY
(Lahore Campus)
DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
Table of Contents

1- Leadership Style of Elon Musk ........................................................................................................ 1

1A. Transformational Leader ................................................................................................................ 1
1B. How does Mr. Elon Musk embody a transformational leader. ...................................................... 1
2- Elon Musk History Towards SpaceX ................................................................................................ 2
1- Leadership Style of Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s personal life goals are those for the sake of humanity, changing

the world and making it a better fun place to live. His goals are not for profit.

His vision drive creativity makes up his transformational leadership style. He

vows never to pursue legal actions who use his ideas for greater good. It

doesn’t matter for him who gets there first or accomplish the goal first that’s

not the main concern. His concern is that his dreams are realized and

actualized. Musk has a great sense of creativity and decision making. He is

great at spying challenges and facing them head on. His ideas are creative

and revolutionary. Elon Musk thinks that a leader should work harder than the

workers who work for him in order to motivate them. His visions are actualized

and so people believe in them, they know that he is taking chances to make

the world better place and his employees love him for that and they love the

fact that his vision is simple and attractive. So the perceived benefits of that

vision is clear.

1A. Transformational Leader

A transformational leader is the one who can inspire others through own ideas and

actions.

1B. How does Mr. Elon Musk embody a transformational leader.

His drive, his vision, his creativity, his enthusiasm, his commitment to his ideas and

his ventures, his selflessness and the risks he takes and his intelligence all of them

culminates and forms him a transformational leader. He is blue thinker.

1|Page
 2- Elon Musk History Towards SpaceX

In 2001, Musk conceptualized "Mars Oasis", a project to land a miniature

experimental greenhouse containing seeds with dehydrated gel on Mars to grow

plants on Martian soil, "so this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled" in an

attempt to regain public interest in space exploration and increase the budget of

NASA. But Musk realized that even with a much larger space budget, travel to Mars

would be prohibitively expensive without a fundamental breakthrough in rocket

technology. In October 2001, Musk travelled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell (an

aerospace supplies fixer), and Adeo Ressi (his best friend from college), to buy

refurbished ICBMs (Dnepr) that could send the envisioned payloads into space. The

group met with companies such as Lavochkin and ISC Kosmotras. However,

according to Cantrell, Musk was seen as a novice and was consequently spat on by

one of the Russian chief designers, and the group returned to the US empty-handed.

In February 2002, the group returned to Russia to look for three ICBMs, bringing

Mike Griffin, who had worked for the CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel; NASA's Jet

Propulsion Laboratory; and was just leaving Orbital Sciences Corporation, a maker

of satellites and spacecraft. The group met again with Kosmotras, and were offered

one rocket for US$8 million. However, this was seen by Musk as too expensive and

Musk left the meeting. While on the return flight Musk realized that he could start a

company which could build the affordable rockets he needed. According to early

Tesla and SpaceX investor Steve Jurvetson, Musk calculated that the raw materials

for building a rocket actually were only 3 percent of the sales price of a rocket at the

time. By applying vertical integration—principally for cost reasons; around 85% of the

entire Falcon/Dragon vehicle is produced in-house— and the modular approach from

software engineering (Falcon 9 uses 9 of the Merlin engines, which were tested on

2|Page
the single engine Falcon 1, Falcon Heavy uses three Falcon 9 booster stages),

SpaceX could cut launch price by a factor of ten and still enjoy a 70 percent gross

margin. Another reason for vertical integration was Musk's belief that reusable

rockets could not be built with components from existing aerospace

suppliers.[citation needed] For example, SpaceX had to design a machine that could

friction stir weld aluminium-lithium alloy for the airframe of the Falcon 9 because

such a machine did not exist. According to Musk SpaceX started with the smallest

useful orbital rocket (Falcon 1 with about half a ton to orbit) instead of building a

more complex and riskier launch vehicle, which could have failed and bankrupted the

company.

In early 2002 Musk was seeking staff for the new company and approached rocket

engineer Tom Mueller, now SpaceX's CTO of Propulsion. SpaceX was first

headquartered in a 75,000 square feet warehouse in El Segundo, California. Musk

decided SpaceX's first rocket would be named Falcon 1, a nod to Star Wars'

Millennium Falcon. Musk planned for Falcon 1's first launch to occur in November

2003, 15 months after the company started.

3|Page