Tesla & Ford – How To Grow, and Hide Your Mistakes

The Business Trendsetter Podcast

Leaders are constantly faced with difficult decisions about investing for the future. This Podcast reveals a sure-fire approach that can help you make these decisions faster, and better. And even cover yourself when you make mistakes.

Tesla pioneered the EV market, and its leader Elon Musk has become legendary. But recently he has been way off trend, and tarnished his reputation, by forcing employees back into the office, and diverting his attention to acquiring Twitter. Yet, in the end nobody cares about this much because Tesla still has the power of its EV business, plus Solar City, the Powerwall business, Space X and The Boring Company. High growth overcomes a multitude of sins, including bad acquisitions and loud mouth ego-maniacal CEOs.

Now Ford has made a big commitment to EVs. And its process was textbook Spark Partners. This podcast reveals how Ford first de-invested in its low growth, low margin traditional sedan business, much to the chagrin of analysts. Then it used the money which would have been invested at low returns to create Ford EV. Now there are 2 companies in Ford, its Ford EV “White Space” business which invested in Rivian and launched the Lightning pick-up – and Ford Blue which is the iconic internal combustion engine Ford F-150 et.al. This has allowed Ford to invest in “the next big thing,” keeping the Defend & Extend managers at bay, and allowing the company to let the marketplace figure out where to best place its resources. This podcast describes this approach in detail, offering insights for leaders of small and mid-size businesses

Take-Away

• Growth is a wonderful thing. When you grow fast enough, you can make mistakes and still overcome them (usually easily)

• Get out of lock-in to your old business by setting up white space where you fund new projects, even competing with your old business, to obtain faster growth