text for tesla motors: at the intersection of innovation and integration

Tesla Motors – At the Intersection of Innovation and Integration

Slide 1: Title

Welcome, thank you for delaying you’re your trek over to the One Direction

backstage pre-party to talk a little more Tesla.

BTW, I took our teenage daughter to a One Direction concert last

September – trust me, you’re all in the right spot.

I am Greg Papay, cattledog on the forums, an architect by day, and by night

a Teslaholic.

Today I’ll highlighting the extraordinary, ever-evolving success story of

Tesla Motors, and distilling it as a story of innovation and integration,

as a way for us all to look at our professions and ask what we can learn

from Tesla’s approach.

Tesla’s Mission

Tesla’s Mission: Do accelerate the adoption of sustainable transport.

Why does this matter to me?

I learned of Tesla about 5 years ago, and immediately saw a resonance with

what the car and company was striving for and what we strive for in our

work at our architecture firm. About 4 years ago we ordered our first Tesla,

we got it nearly 3 years ago, got our second one nearly 2 years ago, and

sold off our last gas car 1 year ago.

Somewhere in the last 5 years we ordered our Model X, and sort of

expected to have it by now, however…

As I learned more about Tesla the company, and certainly after driving the

cars, I came to a realization they were doing something of exceptional

vision and importance.

It made me wonder how.

I wanted to really dive in and analyze that question.

So why does this matter to you, our TMC Connect friends?

I think Tesla’s story is an ideal one to examine for anyone who is in business

today. Their highly integrated and innovative approach is essentially unique

among auto manufacturers, who are shackled by a tradition-bound

industry.

So we’d like each of you to think of your business or practice’s approach to

projects and look with us at a model from outside your industry so we can

start to challenge ourselves and start to change our approach.

Tesla Motors – Why a Relevant Model

The automotive industry has operated essentially the same way for the

past century. It was and is an industry ripe for disruption. Does this sound

vaguely familiar?

Tesla doesn’t just make cool cars – it’s transforming nearly every aspect of

the modern mobility experience – for the car, company and most

importantly its customers. It’s a company that sold just 33,000 cars last

year out of nearly 100 million worldwide. 3/100 of 1%. So with similar odds,

any of us can have a similar impact. The question is - are we willing to think

boldly and take similar risks?

Slide 4: History

First some History – Tesla is named after Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the

AC induction motor in 1888, around which the car is designed.

Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers in Los Angeles

and Silicon Valley who wanted to prove that electric cars could be better

than gasoline-powered cars.

They revealed their first car, the roadster, in 2006 and produced it in 2008.

They IPO’d in 2010, the same year they acquired a 5M sf factory in

Fremont, CA, purchased from Toyota and GM after they mothballed it years

earlier.

The Model S, Tesla’s first ground up design, began production in mid-2012.

Later that year it was named Motor Trend’s Car of the Year, which would

be followed shortly thereafter by being ranked as the best car ever tested

by Consumer Reports.

They introduced the world’s first dual motor, 4WD car last year and will

reveal the Model X, their version of an SUV, in about 3 hours.

(Click)

All this led to the reported sighting of Teslaman, a mythical creature with,

as you can read, many desirable attributes.

Secret Master Plan

Tesla began with a Secret Master Plan, which they published in a blog post

in 2006. It essentially outlined a path from an expensive sports car (the

Roadster), to a mid-priced sedan and SUV (Models S and X), to an

affordable mass-consumer car. We’re about half way.

Slide 6: Founder – Elon Musk

To understand Tesla, you must understand Elon Musk. Buy Ashlee’s book,

it’s an illuminating portrait.

Musk grew up reading science fiction and dreaming of a world different

that the one in which we all lived. This has influenced him through his 43

years.

He went to university in Canada and the US, ending up on the west coast.

He started a small internet company that he sold and parlayed into the

company that would eventually become PayPal, which threw traditional

payment systems on their heads.

Challenging convention is a common theme for Elon Musk.

History – SpaceX

PayPal led to SpaceX.

To breach another industry set in its ways, SpaceX needed a model that was

profoundly different and dramatically cheaper.

To do that, you had to stop throwing away 99% of each rocket launch. Tesla

is the first space company that’s within inches making its first stage

reusable, and space travel dramatically cheaper. Industry being re-

imagined.

Slide 8: Solar City

Musk is also the Chairman of Solar City – Solar City was the first and largest

company to offer ways to for consumers to integrate solar into their

residences via a power purchase agreement. This has democratized the

solar industry and hastened the adoption of renewable energy for

hundreds of thousands, soon to be millions. Tesla’s new stationery storage

battery product, PowerWall and PowerPack, will augment this.

Slide 9: Hyperloop

Finally, a couple years ago Musk proposed the Hyperloop, a pneumatic

transportation pod system that would be significantly cheaper and radically

faster than high-speed rail projects. Again, a fundamental rethinking of how

we approach intercity travel.

Slide 10: Tesla’s First Principles

Which leads us back to Tesla and their mission.

Accelerate the adoption of sustainable transport.

Make a car and company unlike any other.

How could they get there?

Innovation + Integration

Tesla’s survival, let alone its transformational approach to mobility,

required ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and that trait that defines the

American spirit, innovation.

It also required team-building, collaboration, and an integrated approach to

all aspects of their business.

This is what makes Tesla’s story so compelling – it’s not an isolated stroke

of genius.

(Click Through)

Tesla pulled off this achievement through innovation and integration of

approach + process, performance + design, manufacturing, and sales +

service.

Slide 12: Innovation: Approach + Process

When Tesla’s founders speak about the early years at Tesla, when they

were looking to first principles for engineering and design, they say that

innovation was the enabler.

But innovation in what way? For the sake of being new – no. For the

purpose of being better – yes.

Slide 13: Reason from First Principles

At Tesla they would say the search for something better, for innovations, is

spawned by an authentic mode of problem-solving – Reasoning from First

Principles.

Reasoning from First Principles is a physics way of looking at the

world…what that really means is that you boil things down to the most

fundamental truths…and then reason up from there…that takes a lot more

mental energy…

(Click)

So the this is the first of 20 questions - Do we do this often enough in our

search for solutions to our problems or issues, or even when thinking about

our businesses and firms?

Vertically Integrated Team

It’s hard to imagine Tesla starting at any other time, and in any other place,

than the past decade and in California. Not impossible, but really hard.

Tesla really required a technology discontinuity and expertise from outside

the auto industry to come to full fruition. Automobile design, engineering

and manufacturing needed a fresh approach and some fresh science.

They have been innovative because, dramatically more than any current

automaker, but very much like many successful technology companies,

they have vertically integrated their design, engineering, fabrication and

operations, placing most all in-house and often under one roof.

They had to be innovative and integrated. They had to be nimble to

survive. There’s a reason there have been no new US car companies in over

90 years. Tesla had to create distinction, separation, meaningfulness.

(Click)

How many of us ask that of ourselves and our firm?

Slide 15: Top Leadership Involved in Design + Engineering

They were able to do achieve this because of the hands-on leadership of

their core founders – a team of engineers and designers that assembled

around a shared mission.

Elon Musk

JB Straubel

Franz Von Holzhuasen

And back a few years, George Blankenship

Each integral to the design process, each deeply enmeshed in it.

(Click)

Are we, as leaders of our practices, willing to stay in trenches to constantly

make our firms and projects better? Unrelentingly?

Culture of Innovation

All this supports, really compels and fuels Tesla’s culture of innovation.

Tesla recently opened up all of its patents to competitors. Took copies of

them all off the wall in their lobby and replaced them with this quote from

a cult video game from the 1990s.

Why?

They explained it by saying that technology leadership is not defined by the

number of patents on your wall, but – “by the ability of a company to

attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers.”

(Click)

Do we require innovation as part of our design process? How are we

attracting top talent to our firms?

Slide 17: Mission Motivates Employees + Customers

These core leaders set the tone for another critical aspect to Tesla’s success

– their mission motivates their employees and customers.

You can’t fake the enthusiasm captured in this photo. Or at this conference.

Right?

When we received our Model S at the end of 2012, I wrote the following

blog post about people’s experiences when they had taken a test drive or

ride in our car:

…in a span of about 60 seconds: (approach the car, it’s beautiful, the

handles extend, THE HANDLES EXTEND, get in, stunning, the touch screen

stares back at them, the panoramic roof slides open, foot on break,

speedometer flips over, you roll away silently, first straightaway - punch it

reliving memories of first rollercoaster ride, fat-ass grins all over faces)…

...And then they think, NO WAY, as in NO WAY has this freaking out-of-

nowhere company kicked sand in the face of 100 years of auto-making. NO

WAY have they done it, NO WAY is it American, NO WAY is it 7,000 laptop

batteries in the right kool-aid. NO WAY did I just laugh my head off driving

in a loop around your neighborhood!

…It’s our Apollo Program.

People are proud of it. Of their courage to try it. Of the audacity to pull it

off. People we don’t even know are proud of us for buying it. They feel like

they’ve bought it by seeing it or riding in it. No one is lukewarm about it. Is

this how Columbus felt?

Slide 18: Mission Motivates Employees + Customers

That captured an initial rush of excitement that came with purchasing the

car. But it goes deeper.

I have first-hand experience of sense of mission when I received a private e-

mail from a Tesla engineer. Here’s part of what he wrote to me:

I read the Tesla forums often and with great intensity. In particular, your

brilliant and inspiring piece on Tesla and the Apollo program really hit home

for me.

The choice to come to Tesla Motors for me was deeply personal and a very

high risk to the comfortable lifestyle of a typical automotive engineer like

myself in Detroit. Like many automotive "Detroit expats" at Tesla, I

hungered for something more than what the Detroit machine was putting

out. I was never really able to put it in words for people who asked why I

made the leap, and then I read your Apollo post from a few months back. As

I read each line, the smile on my face grew wider and wider, and then tears

actually formed in my eyes. I was really moved.

I immediately sent out an email with a link to your post to my most trusted

friends, family and Tesla colleagues with the simple title ‘This is why I work

at Tesla’. The response I got was incredible. People finally got it. They got

why this company, its products and its people are so different, they got why

I made the change.

Working at Tesla (as you might imagine) is far harder than anything I have

ever done in my life. When I was interviewing for this position, I read a

portion of the job description which said: ‘You must have a passion for

engineering electric vehicles. Without passion, you would find what we are

doing too difficult. There are easier jobs.

Your words still reverberate in my mind and often provide the extra energy I

need to get through a particularly difficult day.

(Click)

Do our clients feel this passionate about what we do for them? Do the

people in our firms feel this way? Shouldn’t they?

Slide 19: Approach + Process: Summary

1. Reason from first principles.

2. Champion a vertically integrated team

3. Entrench leadership in design and engineering

4. Create a culture of innovation

5. Articulate a mission that motivates

Slide 20: Innovation + Integration: Performance + Design

Now let’s talk about the car, Model S (I was hoping to speak about Model X,

too, but I mostly know it as a sculpture of black masking tape at the

moment).

The car’s performance, too, starts with, what else, innovation and

integration.

For Tesla, it started with the critical decision to go all-in on all-electric – a

fundamentally new approach to power and the power train.

Tesla’s commitment in the Model S to an electric powertrain, hyper

efficient packaging and performance engineering make for incredible

design opportunity.

Performance – Lithium Ion, Thermally Managed Battery Module

It all starts with the batteries.

Let’s go back two decades. In 1995, auto battery technology had stagnated,

with the prevailing technology being lead-acid batteries. These were

defined by these highly enviable attributes:

. short lifespan

. heavy in relation to volume

. short range

. but commonplace

Tesla looked at the landscape and decided they needed a fresh approach to

auto batteries. But also that they couldn’t go it alone, they couldn’t invent a

unique battery with limited application – it was simply too expensive.

So Tesla to piggy-backed onto the economy of scale of the consumer

electronics industry to use the guts of a lithium ion laptop battery that was

already being produced in the billions.

It was the simple rethinking of an existing technology, put to new use. This

little module, the guts of the system, drove the whole thing. Systems-driven

design.

(Click)

Can’t we think more this way? What can we adapt in our practices?

Slide 22: Performance – Thermally Managed Battery Module

So, they accomplished this with consumer electronics cells, 7,104 of them,

assembled into 16 modules. Thermally managed and fire protected with

intumescent goo.

Performance – Skateboard and Low CoG

And they took all these and made a skateboard.

They were able to deliver their battery packs for less than half the cost of

competitors who designed custom batteries.

It's almost counterintuitive to start with the part you can’t see to catalyze

the whole design. But they did this with Model S.

Slide 24: Performance – Skateboard and Low CoG

The skateboard has performance benefits in many ways. It allows for

optimized packaging - great spatial efficiency - for the car’s systems.

The motor, inverter and gearbox sit directly on top of the axles, essentially

a direct drive. Not only does it optimize their performance, this compact 3D

packaging of systems creates spatial opportunity for the car cabin above.

(Click) Wouldn’t our industries offer better designs if we dedicated our

efforts similarly, towards optimally efficient packaging?

Slide 25: Performance – Optimized Packaging

So using all that electric power mass as a skateboard, and concentrating

other elements to create spatial efficiency, leads to some exceptional

outcomes:

Model S has the lowest Center of Gravity of any production sedan 17.5” –

supercar territory.

The heavy battery creates a great dampening element for vibration and

road noise – it’s also an exceptionally quiet car.

The battery weight is evenly distributed front to rear, leading to stellar

handling. Lack of engine allows for space framing the front of the car – a

light way to transfer forces and increase safety.

Performance – Integrated Systems

The integrated systems, packaging, and shell all intertwine to create the

safest car on the road.

The car achieves 5 stars in all NHTSA crash tests, in fact scoring the highest

ever in its occupant safety tests.

Despite the sensational stories from a year ago, Model S is more than 10

times less likely to catch fire than gasoline cars.

Slide 27: Performance – Exceptional Envelope

When you start adding all this up, you come to the inevitable conclusion –

the Model S has a Form Language of Performance

Tesla’s lead designer Franz Von Holzhausen says of the Model S’ design

‘it’s like an endurance athlete’, everything in balance, expressing purpose,

athletic.’

(Click)

Rather than chasing style and fashion, shouldn’t a form language of

performance be one of our imperatives?

Slide 28: Performance – Aerodynamics

Perhaps that’s best revealed in the engineering of the car’s envelope and its

aerodynamic efficiency.

The skateboard allows the exterior shell, the body shape, to laser focus on

aerodynamics.

Aerodynamically, Model S has the lowest coefficient of drag of any

production car, a CoD of .24.

Most significantly, the aerodynamics influence the range performance of

the Model S.

Performance – Language of Safety

With lots of focus on aerodynamics, Tesla was able to offer a car with 275

miles in range, roughly 3 times their nearest competitor.

As this graph shows, after 50 mph, power consumption is exponentially

about aerodynamics.

Since range is the typically largest issue for many when considering the

purchase of an electric car, this focus on the car’s envelope was key.

Slide 30: Design – Form Language of Performance

So when design is derived from performance, and performance amplified

by design, we arrive at a truly transformative spot.

It’s design and engineering that are purposeful, meaningful, and

memorable. Resonant. Integrated.

It’s a spectacular outcome when design and engineering join to make the

whole more compelling.

Slide 31: Design – Form Language of Performance

Would I love this car as much if it was simply a golf cart that went 0-60 in 3

seconds? It would novel and interesting, but not compelling.

Slide 32: Design – Integrated Design

A car also must focus on the human body, ergonomics, human-centered

design. The design of Model S considers this in highly integrated ways – all

its pieces fuse engineering purposes with aesthetic resolution and

contribute to an integral whole.

The Door Handle – Oh the door handle, my favorite!!! It sits flush to the

body of the car when the car is in motion, improving aerodynamics over a

projected handle.

But as you approach the car, it projects, it appears when needed (my wife

would say, ‘sort of like a husband’), and reaches out to you, a first

introduction.

(Click)

Shouldn’t all designs be more about human interaction than composition?

Again, if we fully embraced that, what might we achieve?

Slide 33: Design – Integrated Design

The car’s interior continues the design theme of ergonomic, sinuous shapes

and continual flows, a space at rest yet somehow in visual motion.

It really starts with the car’s controls, which are not buttons and dials but

essentially all embedded in the 17” Touchscreen – a consumer electronics

paradigm, a technological fascia, refreshing design.

Slide 34: Spatial Opportunity

Overall, the interior is probably best described as opportunity space,

created by that skateboard battery pack we discussed earlier.

Down low, the flat floor creates opportunity.

The rigid car structure allows for a glass cockpit up top, mixing with the

silence and acceleration of the electric motor to really feel like you’re flying.

Think of this – when I was a kid growing up, we were a family of five, I had

two sisters. Guess who got to sit on the hump in the middle of the back

seat all the time? Sore bottom, knees in my chin. No more hump. In fact,

the middle seat has the best view of the 17” screen!

Just think of that - the worst seat in every other passenger car is now the

best seat in the Model S. How cool is that?!?

Design

It continues with door pulls that happen simply by folding the door panels,

repeated with the latch pull, and providing clever, unexpected storage.

The panoramic roof, which allows for light and ventilation while creating a

continuous expanse of glass that’s in keeping with the sweeping design

gestures of the car.

Charge Port – Like door handles, hides when not in use, part of the car’s

safety reflector system.

The headlights, with a distinctive eyelid profile, another favorite of mine,

with LED technology accenting a crisp, linear look.

All these, and many other pieces, a marriage of beauty and performance.

Slide 36: Design – Holistic

And the ethos of Model S extends beyond the car itself, creating a

connected universe for the Tesla brand, a holistic ecosystem of holistic

design.

The Stores

The Superchargers (we’ll come back to those)

The keyfob

Wine glasses (OK, I had those made).

The experience of Model S is enhanced by the holistic approach to design

and engineering.

(Click)

Why wouldn’t we all move to reclaim a more holistic approach in our

efforts, in our work?

Design: Summary

1. Rethink on a systems level – adapt technology

2. Optimize packaging

3. Commit to a form language of performance

4. Embrace human-centered design

5. Create a holistic ecosystem of design

Slide 38: Innovation – Manufacturing

In 2010, Tesla acquired the NUMMI Factory in Fremont, California.

Previously jointly operated by GM and Toyota, Tesla was able purchase the

factory for pennies on the dollar.

At over 5M sf, they’ll be able to manufacture 500,000 cars per year there

when fully built out, sometime in the 2018-2020 timeframe.

Acquiring such a large space and fitting it out allowed Tesla to approach

manufacturing in innovative ways as well.

Slide 39: Manufacturing – In-House Fabrication

The first is Tesla’s ability to insource approximately 60% of their parts, with

that number set to grow when they bring battery production back to the US

next year.

Most auto manufacturers basically make their engines and that’s it. There’s

a reason that they operate on model years, they are ocean liners when it

comes to changing directions.

Not Tesla, they have literally improved the car’s hardware (physical parts)

dozens of times in the first three years.

It’s a software notion of upgradeability that they have applied to

manufacturing.

(Click)

Shouldn’t we use digital technologies to test and prototype?

Manufacturing – Highly Adaptable Robotic Assembly

I have been on a factory tour twice, I highly recommend it to anyone who

can wrangle a spot.

The integration of these Kuka robots into production allows for things to be

built and tolerances to be observed that just wouldn’t be possible

otherwise – the process of auto manufacturing informing the product.

These adaptable robots allow Tesla to alter production as they implement

improvements in the car. Not in model years, but as they are able to.

And just as significantly, there are literally hundreds of engineers on the

floor at the factory, right adjacent to production. An amazing, recursive

loop of feedback from one discipline to the other.

(Click)

How might we collaborate with others to imagine a more efficient

production process, one that feeds back to design?

Slide 41: Manufacturing – Internally Coded Software Development

Much like part manufacturing is dramatically more integrated at Tesla than

conventional automakers, so is the software that runs the factory and the

car.

Rather than buying 3rd party software and adapting it, Tesla has written

their own, for the robots, for assembly, for diagnostics, etc.

(Click)

Should more of the value of what we do be embedded in writing code for to

help us design?

Manufacturing – Gigafactory!

By the end of this decade, Tesla expects to be producing and selling

500,000 cars/year.

However, to supply batteries for a half million cars/year would require

doubling the world’s production of lithium-ion batteries. How do you do

that?

The answer is Tesla’s Gigafactory, an enormous facility being built outside

Reno that will at least double the world’s lithium-ion battery production,

manufacturing 50 gWh of batteries per year.

They think the economy of scale and in-housing battery production will

drop battery costs by at least 30%, and that’s before technological

advances are applied, which are on the order of magnitude of 5%-7%/year.

(Click)

Do we have an equivalent? What will your Gigafactory be?

Slide 43: Manufacturing – Stationary Storage Products

When batteries become produced at this scale and their costs come down,

they become very competitive in other applications, such as stationary

storage for residential, commercial, and utility customers.

Tesla just announced their first stationary storage products 2 months ago –

Powerwall and Powerpack.

The automotive use of batteries drove the technological advances and cost

reductions. This is going to dramatically accelerate the adoption of

stationary storage and intermittent, renewable energy.

It’s a virtuous circle.

(Click)

What related products or processes would impact your industry similarly?

Manufacturing: Summary

1. Internalize prototyping and fabrication

2. Initiate adaptable digital design and fabrication

3. Internally develop and code software

4. Pursue technological advances

5. Seek symbiotic opportunities

Slide 45: Innovation – Sales and Service

Lastly, we get to Tesla’s most direct interface with the public, with their

clients, through sales and service.

With their unique approach to design, engineering, and manufacturing,

they could have said, “that’s good, that’s enough”.

But to meet their mission, to accelerate the adoption of sustainable

transport, Tesla needed to offer a fundamentally different approach to

engaging their clients to breed brand loyalty and the best marketing they

could hope for – passionate owners.

(Some of whom, I understand, might even be here today…)

Slide 46: Sales and Service – Direct to Consumer Sales

In those beautiful stores of theirs, Tesla sells cars direct to consumers.

Perhaps many of you have seen them. In some of the highest trafficked

malls in the country. They are really new-customer education centers,

demystifying the company, the car, and the ownership experience for a

skeptical general public.

In those stores – except in a few states – Tesla sells direct to consumers.

There is no auto dealership involved. No added cost.

(Click)

When we think about our sales model, are we serving our clients best with

our traditional ways?

Sales and Service – Continual Software Upgrade

Tesla is covered on Wall Street by a number of automobile analysts.

Recently, one made a dramatic claim – that today, 10% of the value of the

automobile is in its software, but in 10 years 60% of its value will be.

Guess which Silicon Valley based automobile company is best positioned to

be the leader in this space?

Many elements of automotive innovation can be migrated to software,

where technology accelerates much more rapidly as computing costs fall.

So the software-centric Model S is the first continually upgradeable car, and

the first where so much data about it is constantly being collected and

analyzed to improve it.

(Click)

How can we harness data to improve our offices and projects?

Slide 48: Sales and Service – Perpetual Product Improvement

What exists in software similarly extends in hardware.

Tesla is perpetually improving their product. If something can be improved,

after testing, it’s implemented. Not in the next model year, but in the next

time production can be reasonably adjusted.

Improved seats. Better battery shields.

Perhaps the biggest improvement has been their introduction six months

ago of the first dual-motor, all-wheel drive.

They did this not in a model year change, but in October when it was ready.

It’s been an instant hit.

(Click)

How do we create an ability to perpetually improve our projects, post-

occupancy?

Sales and Service – Autopilot

Uber and Lyft – Driving services we order from the palms of our hands.

Someone else does the driving for us. What if that someone was your car?

Perhaps the most dramatic hardware and software upgrade to the

ownership experience is Tesla’s integration of autopilot sensors into the car

– cameras, radar, and sonar – and interpolation software to run them.

It’s there in cars today, some of it functional but most of it awaiting

regulatory approval and a simple software update.

In doing all of this, they give us back something very precious – time.

(Click)

What can we put on automate to increase efficiencies?

Slide 50: Sales and Service – Supercharging

And finally, supercharging, Tesla’s fast, DC charging stations that dot the

country, really the world.

It’s their effort to overcome ‘range anxiety’ that some people feel with

battery electric cars.

Charging at their superchargers is free to Tesla owners. It’s like Ford and

Exxon got hooked up and you could go into any Exxon and get gas for free.

So they took what was perhaps the car’s greatest perceived weakness and

made it an amenity – free supercharging.

(Click)

The question for us is, what are our perceived weaknesses – and how can

we turn them into our strengths?

Sales + Service: Summary

1. Question antiquated delivery methods

2. Continually upgrade the user experience

3. Perpetually improve products and service

4. Automate the mundane to open up opportunity

5. Make a perceived weakness a strength

Slide 52: What’s Next for Us

I come back to a sentence in a letter I received a few years back from the

Department Head in the College of Architecture at Cal Poly, San Luis

Obispo, my alma mater, extolling the virtues of an architectural education.

In it he remarked that true architecture resides where the intuitive and the

artful meet the scientific and the demonstrable.

I think of this often when I think of Tesla and Model S, and how they

operate at the intersection of innovation and integration.

It was pretty hard for the automotive industry to see this 10 years ago, but

these ideas were crystalizing among a few leaders at Tesla.

Slide 53: The Intersection of Design + Performance: The Tesla Motors Lesson

What can’t we see that’s 10 years in front of us?

And who among us will see it?

Will our professions and industries have similar leaders?

Fortune favors the bold – let’s go forth and be brave.

Slide 54: Thank you.

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