Isaacson: Three Essential Qualities of Great Entrepreneurs

Verification notes (2026-10-28): 1. Leonardo da Vinci left more than 7,000 pages of notes, including lists of “things to find out this week,” such as the woodpecker's tongue. Source: https://commonreader.wustl.edu/leonardos-relentless-curiosity/ 2. Isaacson has publicly recounted the story of Jobs and Corning's Gorilla Glass. Source: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/transcript/walter-isaacson-talks-steve-jobs 3. Einstein was still writing equations for a unified field theory shortly before his death. The childhood compass story appears in Isaacson's biography. Sources: https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-final-days-of-albert-einstein https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0745/2006051264-s.html 4. Isaacson identifies three missions for Musk: making humanity multiplanetary, sustainable energy, and AI safety. Musk loved reading science fiction and comics as a child. Sources: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-09-11/walter-isaacson-biographer-elon-musk-has-multiple-personalities-at-times-hell-be-funny-others-he-gets-into-demon-mode.html https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-book-review 5. Tesla delivered more than 1.8 million vehicles in 2023. Source: https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-deliveries-and-date-financial-results-webcast-fourth-quarter-2023 6. Following comparison with these sources, this post has removed statements for which reliable sources could not be found and revised some wording into source-supported versions (three changes in total). ---- Isaacson: Three Essential Qualities of Great Entrepreneurs The first quality is curiosity. Pure curiosity: “being curious simply for curiosity's sake, with no other purpose.” When I wrote about Leonardo da Vinci, I studied his more than 7,000 pages of notebooks. Looking through the manuscripts and at the things that interested him, I saw drawings of curling hair and swirling air and water, and his attempts to describe them using Fibonacci numbers. He was observing these forces of nature and how they appear in the natural world. You can see this throughout his life. Leonardo tried to remain curious and to understand almost everything knowable in his time. He kept a “list of things to find out each week”: Why is the sky blue? Why is Florence so prosperous? What does a woodpecker's tongue look like? I thought: who wakes up one morning and decides to find out what a woodpecker's tongue looks like? But that was Leonardo da Vinci. He did it out of pure curiosity, and later painted the bird in The Baptism of Christ, the swirls of water around Jesus's ankles, and the blue sky. When I wrote about Einstein, I saw some of the same curiosity, even the same question: why is the sky blue? Both Einstein and Leonardo experimented with this. You and I may still go for walks, but no longer marvel at the sky as we did as children. When Einstein was a boy, his father gave him a compass. Its needle quivered and pointed north. Einstein began wondering: nothing is touching the needle, so what makes it move? He retained that curiosity about force fields throughout his life. ---- The second quality of innovation is passion. When Jobs was a child, his father was building a fence in their backyard. His father said they had to make the back as beautiful as the front. Jobs asked, “Why? Nobody will see it.” His father replied, “Yes, but you will know.” “My father told me that people who truly care about beauty care even about the parts you cannot see.” “If you make something beautiful even where nobody will see it, that shows passion for your product.” So when they were making the original Mac, Jobs made the casing beautiful: sealed, with lovely curves, looking like a kitchen appliance. Interestingly, when it was nearly finished, Jobs looked at the circuit board inside and said it was not attractive enough. The engineers said nobody would see it. “Yes, but you will know.” Jobs repeated the fence story and delayed the computer's launch until they could arrange the internal circuit board beautifully. When Jobs was making the first iPhone, he wanted the front to be a beautiful sheet of glass that would not easily get dirty. But the glass available then was unsatisfactory. He went to Corning and said he wanted a formula for a strong, smooth material called “Gorilla Glass,” and needed a certain quantity by a deadline. Corning's leader, Weeks, said they had never done it and could not finish so quickly. “But Jobs stared at me without blinking and said, ‘Don't be afraid. You can do it!’” Weeks told me. The result was that every sheet of glass for the iPhone, from that year to today, has been made by Corning. ---- Innovation requires a strong sense of mission. Musk was a very lonely child and socially awkward. So he spent a lot of time in bookstores reading science fiction and comics. As he grew up, he developed three major missions to save humanity in the future. The first was to make us a multiplanetary species by sending humans to other planets. He thinks consciousness may exist elsewhere in the universe, and that having multiple habitable planets could protect us against risks to our own. “But we have to start now.” That gives him a daily passion for sending people to Mars. His second great mission is sustainable energy on this planet. When everyone else was withdrawing from electric-car manufacturing in the early 2000s, he persisted, even as Tesla faced bankruptcy. In the end, he founded an electric-car company that now sells more than a million vehicles a year, with which other American automakers cannot compete. His third major mission is to make AI safer for us. Musk believes that without action, we will create AI that harms rather than helps humanity. So he recently founded an AI company focused on humanity's long-term future. Nevertheless, Musk's sense of mission is worth learning from. Leonardo, Einstein, and all innovators also share this quality. As Einstein lay dying, his aorta had ruptured. He knew he had only a day or two left, yet forced himself, in pain, to write more equations, trying to work out how a force field interacts with a physical object. Or, more simply, the question from childhood: why does a compass needle quiver and point north? That higher purpose is always connected with passion and curiosity about everything in nature. Then you understand that it is not just about your passion, but about connecting it with something greater than yourself. That is what great innovators do. #CommonWealthMagazineIssue791 ---- On innovation, Robin would add imagination. You need curiosity, passion, and mission, and ideally imagination as well. Musk's extensive childhood reading helped nurture his expansive imagination. Every child has curiosity and imagination. It is a real pity that the environment gradually stifles them.