Innovative

landscape of
Tesla
 Contents

Technology and IP Portfolio Harshit Gujral

What makes Tesla Harshit Gujral

innovative

Is Tesla Disruptive Harshit Gujral

Tesla’s Innovation Strategy

4 factors of Innovation
Capital

Commercializing Strategy
Ecosystem Strategy

System Level Strategy

 Tesla
Few companies have attracted as much scorn and
adoration as Tesla. When Tesla launches a product
like the Cybertruck, the reception tends to be
divisive: critics see it as further evidence that
founder Elon Musk is out of touch and doomed to
fail, while supporters buy in.
Disagreements aside, there is no question that the
company has shifted the auto industry towards
electric vehicles and achieved consistently growing
revenues (passing $20 billion in 2019). Surely,
there is a method to what seems like madness to so
many.
 0
Technology
1
and IP
portfolio
 Technology and IP Portfolio

Skilled Supercharge
Engineerin r
g
Workforce
Leading EV
maker
 02
What makes
Tesla Innovative
 What makes Tesla Innovative

Autopilot Bioweapon Easter Eggs

Defense
Mode

Sentry
mode The App Dog Mode
Tesla App
This is an example of the UI of Tesla
app allowing a user to control their
car from anywhere and checking all
the information regarding their car
Tesla Celebration Mode
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3
Is Tesla
Disruptive?
 Is Tesla Truly Disruptive?
In some ways we can say that Tesla has
been a victim of its own success and
Tesla’s cult like following claims that the
technology is overhyped and
overvalued. Factors like
● Government Initiatives
● Regulations and Subsidies
● Availability of Tax Initiatives
Will limit long term growth for Tesla and
solar panel and battery prices will also
decline faster than it will be possible for
Tesla to decrease their prices which will
result tesla in losing market share and
see declined shares. Other automakers
also investing in EV technology might
result in Tesla losing sales
 04
Tesla’s
Innovation
Strategy
Tesla’s Innovation Strategy
Commercialize vs.
Actually
Commercializing
To understand Tesla’s strategy, one
must first separate its two primary
pillars: headline-grabbing moves like
launching the Cybertruck or the
Roadster 2.0 (which the company claims
will accelerate faster than any
production car ever made) and the big
bets it is making on its core vehicles,
the models S, X, 3, and Y. These efforts
aim to achieve different things —
winning the resources to commercialize
vs. actually commercializing the idea —
but they come together to achieve a
central goal: bring a new innovation to
Tesla’s Innovation Strategy
Commercialize
Strategy
Efforts like the Cybertruck aren’t really
about making money; they are about
getting attention and proving that Tesla
is one of the world’s most innovative
companies, specifically for the purpose
of building Tesla’s ability to win support
from stakeholders — This is
called innovation capital.
 05
Factors of
Innovation
Capital
4 factors of Innovation Capital
Who you are Who you know
(innovation- (innovation-
specific human specific social
capital) capital)
Your capacity for Your social
forward thinking, connections with
creative problem- people who have
solving, and valuable resources for
persuasion The things you do
innovation
What you’ve done to generate
(innovation- attention and
specific credibility for
reputation yourself and your
capital) ideas (impression
amplifiers)
Your track record and
Politicians with political capital can get others to
reputation for
join them in pursuing their objectives; in a
innovation
similar fashion, business leaders with innovation
capital can attract the resources needed for
innovation to flourish.
 06
Commercializing
Strategy
 Commercializing strategy
Tesla’s existing vehicles — the model S, 3, X and Y — form the core products and
require the most investment. These big bets aim to transform an industry and they
require paying attention not just to the product but to the entire product
ecosystem.
Software Architecture
What makes this part of the strategy truly unique is not just that Tesla produces
electric vehicles but that it introduced a new hardware and software architecture
(the way you put the car together). For example, a Tesla has more software than
the average vehicle and it is integrated around a single central software
architecture. Although, most gas-powered cars have software too, they typically
have less software and operate on a different architecture making it more
challenging to imitate Tesla’s ability to update software and optimize vehicle
performance.
 Commercializing strategy
Hardware Architecture
Tesla’s hardware architecture — a flat pack of batteries at the base, two electric
engines (front and rear), no transmission, etc. — also give it an advantage over
competing electric vehicles built on traditional vehicle architectures, such as a
lower centre of gravity, greater energy density and more efficient battery
management.
This means that pound-for-pound, Tesla tends to beat out competitors who try
to leverage parts of the old internal combustion vehicle architecture, for example;
by putting batteries in the trunk rather than in a flat pack at the bottom.
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Ecosystem
Strategy
 Ecosystem Strategy
● Tesla’s ecosystem strategy also considers the level of individual components
for its products. Profits in an industry tend to flow to the bottlenecks — the
components that limit the performance of the system. In the case of electric
cars, even though batteries are made of commodity materials, because their
power capacity limits the performance of most applications, especially cars,
they are a bottleneck to the performance of the whole system.
● By investing in batteries, producing them at scale and in better ways, Tesla is
betting that they will control the bottleneck and thus be the profit center for
the future of the industry.
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System Level
Strategy
 System Level Strategy
● Tesla’s strategy also accounts for the system level: the entire set of
complements needed for a consumer to use its product. This is why Tesla has
built out a charging network for its cars across The United States of America.
Acting early enabled Tesla to be the only electric car that could drive long
distances because there was an infrastructure in place for charging.
● In the future, this advantage may erode if other automakers build charging
networks and piggyback off their existing dealership networks to potentially
offer more convenient service. But for now, Tesla has the advantage and looks
to be extending it by creating interoperability with new networks like EV go.
Thank
You