Are all tech companies just copying Elon now?
Silicon Valley hubris at its best
By leveraging this clarity he can Get Things Done™, and we've seen tangible proof of that already with Tesla and SpaceX.
For everything he does deliver, there's 5 promises that he didn't. Humans on Mars by 2024, infrastructure on Mars by 2022? Model 3 was greatly delayed. $35k price point promise?
I'm not anti-Elon, the opposite actually; he does great work and his companies have contributed a lot and indeed solved many problems. But I really do wish people would tone down the hype over him sometimes. Half of what he says isn't even in realistic development, it just sees a trailer, and the next thing you know there's another product announced and people have forgotten all about that one.
They are actually pretty common.
Musk is not about innovation in terms of entirely new products. As other posters have commented, rockets, electric cars, and Internet satellites have all been done before.
Where he seems to be special is having the vision to see opportunities to develop or scale existing products much further than incumbents, and having the confidence/chutzpah/bloody-mindedness to pull it off.
However, through the development required to meet his challenging goals, his teams often need to innovate significantly - this innovation is often exceptional.
And of course, what makes a large-scale global Internet satellite service viable is actually the ability to reuse launch rockets - one of his other major innovations.