Tesla has shifted the auto industry toward electric vehicles, achieved consistently growing revenues, and at the start of 2020 was the highest-performing automaker in terms of total return, sales growth, and long-term shareholder value. As a technology and innovation scholar, the author has studied how innovators commercialize new technologies and found that Tesla’s strategy offers enduring lessons for any innovator, especially in terms of how to win support for an idea and how to bring new technologies to market. To understand Tesla’s strategy, one must separate its two primary pillars: headline-grabbing moves like launching the Cybertruck or the Roadster 2.0 and the big bets it is making on its core vehicles, the models S, X, 3, and Y.
Few companies have attracted as much scorn and adoration as Tesla. When Tesla launches a product like the Cybertruck, the reception tends to be divisive: Critics see it as further evidence that founder Elon Musk is out of touch and doomed to fail, while supporters buy in — within a month Tesla received 200,000 preorders for the new vehicle. Compare that with the Ford-150, the world’s best-selling car in 2018, which sold just over 1 million vehicles that year.
