Elon Musk mastering the art of making an aspirational business case:
We are trying to dig a hole under L.A., to create [what will hopefully be] a 3D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion.
Elon Musk, The future we’re building — and boring, TED 2017.
- Defining the problem: Traffic, a soul-destroying part of our life
- Demoing the solution through video (even if there is no working prototype available
- Using “back-of-envelope” calculations, such as “from Westwood to LAX in 5-6 minutes” or extensive use of orders-of-magnitude, which intuitively resonate to the human mind
- Providing a handful of highly technical details
- Exposing and addressing feasibility counterarguments:
- Is it possible to build several tunnels one after the other?
- Isn’t tunnel building too costly and too slow?
- Framing. Demonstrating superiority to a comparable solution: Why go down and not up? (i.e. why a network of tunnels is better than flying cars?)