What Tesla Could Bring to Apple

Hint: It’s not the car

Business publications and other media were abuzz  last week about a meeting that took place between Elon Musk and Apple.  The speculation mostly centered on an acquisition of Tesla by Apple. After all, Apple has cash; Tesla operates in a capital-intensive business. There is a foregone conclusion in almost every article that Tesla needs Apple, and with Apple’s help, Tesla will thrive.

Certainly, there is a lot that Apple can do for Tesla’s business.  Who else is better suited to perfect the connected car? And, Apple can bring some of the best CRM practices to a category in dire need of such capabilities.  Ditto for their retail savvy.  And, of course, Apple’s aforementioned cash reserves don’t hurt.  But all this may miss the point of the real power of such a merger.  The answer may lie, instead, in the magic of these brands.

These are two like-minded brands. Each plays by their own rules, eschewing category conventions, letting their brand values be their guide to category breaking innovation.  Each began as premium niche players with the desire to dominate the market. Each has strong design sensibilities and relentless attention to detail.   But perhaps the most important similarity is that each has been led by a strong-willed visionary, arrogant enough to believe in what seems impossible, and make it real.

So rather than focus on what Apple can do for Tesla’s business, perhaps the press should be focusing on what Tesla, in the form of Elon Musk can do for the Apple brand.

Since Steve Jobs’ death, the Apple business has continued to thrive, but the Apple brand has lost its vision.  There has been no revolutionary product, but rather incremental improvements to existing products.  While Apple may well still be the gold standard in many categories, the competition has closed the distance between them enough to give Apple some credible competition in the categories that Apple created.  Simply put, Apple has stopped behaving like Apple. This is because Steve Jobs’ fanatical, some would say tyrannical leadership style and crystal clear vision drove the brand to set new standards in innovation and marketing.

And that’s where Elon Musk comes in.  Elon Musk not a car guy, and based upon his track record is likely to get bored with the car business very soon.  Elon Musk is however a fanatic. He is a fanatic who is always looking for the next big thing, and is not afraid to enter uncharted waters.  He made his fortune in technology, and his current business investments span everything from space travel to solar power.  He has envisioned a new form of mass transit that will allow people to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 30 minutes. And he has the audacity to say is feasible! There seems to be no limit to his vision, or the categories to which he seeks to apply it.

So, if Apple were to acquire not Tesla the company, but Musk the visionary, it could mean that the Apple brand could start behaving like Apple again.