As we all know, Musk is the greatest inventor, physicist, engineer, academician of the American Academy of Engineering, entrepreneur and philanthropist in the world today. In addition, Musk has many other titles, some of which are self-proclaimed, and some are named by netizens, such as Iron Man, the King of Technology, the Master of Currency, the King of Electronic Music, and the Emperor of Mars . For example, Musk once claimed to be an agent of the US Secret Service, and netizens called it " Tesla worker", referred to as a agent.
1993, Musk graduated from U Pennsylvania with a dual degree in economics and physics, so he has a dual knowledge background in natural sciences and social sciences. In 1995, 24-year-old Musk entered Stanford University to study Materials Science and applied physics doctoral courses. However, the day after school started, Musk decided to leave school and start his own business, and since then he started his entrepreneurial journey from cheating to his peak.
1995-2002, Musk and his partners successively established three companies, namely the online content publishing software Zip2, electronic payment X.com and PayPal. Afterwards, Musk successively founded American space exploration technology company . Its "dragon" capsule of its SpaceX successfully connected with International Space Station and returned to Earth, opening up the era of private operation of space delivery, and achieving the successful launch and complete recycling of rockets.
Musk invested US$6.3 million in Tesla Automobile and became the chairman of the company. Tesla has now become the global new energy vehicle giant, leading the development direction in this field. At the same time, Musk is also committed to implementing the Mars immigration plan called " Mars 1 ", the super high-speed rail with a speed of 965 kilometers per hour, and the development of the brain-computer interface of artificial intelligence brain-computer interface.
Musk's success has indeed shocked the world, and people will have a question about this, that is, why innovative geniuses such as Musk and Jobs always appear in the United States, but it is difficult for China to have such a genius?
The author believes that the reason why China has difficulty in appearing Musk-like characters is not that Chinese people are not smart enough and have an IQ as good as Americans, but because of the following aspects Because:
1. Currently, China's educational methods and cultural background are difficult to form a soil for cultivating innovative talents
In this regard, Professor Yang Zhenning once pointed out incisively that In terms of China's cultural soil and educational methods, China cannot produce people like Musk and Feynman (famous American physicist). People like this will be regarded as madmen in China.
In fact, both Musk and Feynman's success is due to the good innovation environment and academic research atmosphere in the United States. Feynman once said, "If I were not in the United States, I would die." "It is precisely because the United States has an advanced education system that can cultivate outstanding talents with innovative spirit, and the United States can also provide these innovative talents with a good entrepreneurial atmosphere, allowing them to start their own company and successfully start their entrepreneurial life.
Yang Zhenning worked and lived in the United States for 58 years. He concluded with his personal experience that "Chinese students' academic performance is often much better than American students. However, after 10 years, scientific research results are much less than others. The reason is that American students have active thinking, strong hands-on ability and innovative spirit. ”
From the comparison of the American education method and China's education method, the gap between the two can be seen: The United States adopts an inspirational and induced open education method, which is student-centered, activity-centered, teacher-led, and teaches students according to their aptitude; while China adopts a cram-style passive education method. A closed education method centered on curriculum, teacher-centered, and exam-oriented.
Moreover, the United States has world-class universities and the best faculty. The professors in American universities come from all over the world, and it can be said that they gather the world's top educational resources. These conditions are difficult for other countries to meet.
The education model in the United States is heuristic. Primary and secondary schools in the United States do not have unified textbooks and exams, and never rank grades. The school’s responsibility is to continuously tap the potential of children. They are encouraged to think independently, judge choices, make bold attempts, practice hands-on and express personal opinions. American education focuses on practice, so students have relatively strong hands-on skills.
Students have been exposed to scientific research methods and processes very early, and have cultivated the qualities of putting forward ideas, collecting data, and expounding opinions. These are already developed with the help of daily teaching activities. When they become adults, divergent and creative thinking will be formed naturally.
This is also when American college students can quickly integrate into society after graduation, find jobs, and make a difference in jobs, and quickly make achievements. Unlike Chinese college students, they are incompatible with society and are always difficult to be accepted by employers, and they are in a state that graduation means unemployment.
The author believes that in fact, the biggest flaw of current Chinese education is that it cannot stimulate students' subjective initiative and creativity to the greatest extent in the education process. Therefore, the shortcomings of "how to cultivate students' innovative thinking" should be filled as soon as possible.
2. The United States has a good scientific research environment and first-class scientific research equipment, which can provide the world's best scientific research platform
The United States not only has a good scientific research environment, but also can provide the world's most advanced laboratories. Therefore, it attracts scientists around the world like a black hole, making the United States a gathering place for top scientists in the world. Silicon Valley has thus become the cradle of global cutting-edge technological innovation.
The financial hegemony of US$ has played a very important role in the development of the technology industry. Since the US dollar is the world currency, although the United States needs to invest a lot of money to build a technology product in a certain field, for countries with near zero cost, the United States can print a large amount of currency to provide foreign exchange , and then obtain high-tech products through global procurement and widely absorb global high-tech talents.
Given the strong economic foundation and scientific research strength of the United States, with funds, equipment and talents, all these conditions for technological innovation are met. Then it will naturally come naturally to make breakthroughs in a certain scientific and technological field.
3. The immense obsession and love for scientific research
In addition to hardware conditions, there is another important factor in scientific and technological innovation, that is, scientists' unlimited love for scientific research. There are many explorers in the United States in scientific research. They frequently invest huge amounts of money into the market and never give priority to returns. They are just out of obsession with technology itself, or just to explore the secrets of nature, or to realize their youthful dreams, which many Chinese scientific researchers lack.
The new generation of American entrepreneurs basically have superior families and have no worries about food and clothing. Their purpose of realizing their dreams is not to make money, but to consider the survival and development of the entire human race. In order to realize your dream, even if you fail many times, you will be willing to spend no matter how much money you spend.
In fact, it is their crazy, obsessed with scientific and technological innovation that has prompted the United States to become the birthplace of many scientific and technological achievements and has always led the development of the global scientific and technological trend.
Musk is a typical representative of them. Musk's first three rocket launches ended in failure. For the fourth time, he took out all his money. He fought with his back and forth. He knew very well that there would be no fifth launch. If the launch failed, he would have nothing. But in order to realize his dream, he still insisted on giving it a try and finally achieved success.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that among the countless people, geniuses are only an extremely small minority. Musk's path to innovation proves why innovation always comes from this very small number of people.Musk talked about the fact that there were always various thoughts in his mind, even reaching the point of "an endless explosion". Even when he was only 5 or 6 years old, he felt that he was different.
It can be seen from this that only extremes can achieve the ultimate. As the playwright Berner Shaw said, "Rational people adapt to the world, and irrational people need the world adapt to him, so all the progress of the world depends on irrational people."
Therefore, for geniuses, we cannot look at them from the perspective of ordinary people, and we must give more tolerance and understanding of some of their extreme behaviors. Only in this way can we create a soil that is conducive to talent cultivation and an objective environment for scientific and technological innovation. Only with these conditions can China have a scientific and technological genius like Musk appear in the future.
