George Blankenship interview: former Tesla and Apple executive
Steve Jobs
Now an independent consultant  Blankenship was previously a vice president at Tesla Motors from 2010 to 2013  and a vice president of real estate at Apple  working closely alongside  Steve Jobs  to launch the first 165 Apple Stores worldwide before that.
Blankenship recently sat down with Business Insider deputy executive editor Matt Turner to discuss  the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk   and how  they  set  their  companies up for success from the beginning.
At Apple  we looked around at what was going on in the world at the time  and the technologies that were available that weren't in phones of the time. If you went back 10 years ago and you looked at a Motorola flip phone â one of the hottest phones â or the Palm  Nokia  et cetera  they worked  but there was so much more potential.  Steve  just saw so much more opportunity for what this device could be.
 Steve  just saw so much more opportunity for what this device could be.
They had a phone  which then enabled the real disruptive part of that technology  which was the app store. Think about it  for two  three  four years  Apple never advertised the phone; it was "there's an app for that." If you step back  what would Uber be today without a smartphone? What would Facebook be? What  Steve  saw were opportunities with existing things that other people just didn't see.
With Elon  it's very  very interesting talking to  him  because everything really does have a bigger picture to it. You think about Tesla. Well  when I first met with  him  six or seven years ago   he  had this vision  and the vision was to move the planet away from fossil fuels and into renewable resources. Tesla is a part of that  but it's not the whole picture. It's moving people to electric vehicles  but what else could you do? Well  if you're building an electric car you have to have a lot of batteries  so you go to a battery factory. Well  if you've got these batteries what else could you do with them? You could do a battery wall  a battery pack that hangs on the wall â you charge it up and run your house and car off of it. And then what's missing is solar  so a year ago they merged with Solar City.
Now you can take this energy from this great big fusion reactor in the sky  put it in batteries and run your car and your house. It's a bigger picture than what other people are doing. You might ask  well  why don't other car dealers do this? Or why don't other manufacturers do this? It's because they just don't see things the way a  Steve Jobs  and an Elon Musk do â and they have the conviction to make it happen.
Turner: How alike are those two people   Steve Jobs  and Elon Musk?  They 're almost iconic now. What similarities do  they  share  and what was it like to work with  them ?
Blankenship:  They  share a lot of the same qualities.  They  have a conviction and a belief that the direction  they 're going is right. Regardless of what anybody else says  the direction is right.
Turner: How much of those companies are tied up in the individual? Clearly  Apple exists after  Steve Jobs   but how much of the culture that's there was really  the Steve Jobs culture ? How does  it  survive on after  he 's no longer there? What would you make of Apple today?
Blankenship: When you put together the group of people I just described  those people have a can-do mind-set  that nothing's impossible: "We're doing something bigger than making an electronic device; there's a bigger purpose here." Look at what the results have been of Apple. Yes   Steve  passed away in 2011  but look at the way the company has continued to evolve as a service company: How many millions of iPhone X's do you think they're going to take on order for over the next couple of weeks? It's going to be massive. The company today isn't going through the product innovations on an every three-year basis that it was in the 10 years between 2000 and 2010  but I think it's finding ways that the device has become more personal and more embedded in what you do and how you do it  which aligns you to the platform in an incredible way. Tim [Cook] has done a really good job of doing that.
Turner: What you've described at both Apple and Tesla with  Steve Jobs and Elon Musk  is a mission at the heart of the company and its strategy. Are there any other companies or people you see out there that when you look at them you say  that's the same thing?
Blankenship: I think there are different types of missions. Yes  Elon and  Steve  had their missions. If you look at Amazon  Amazon's mission  without a doubt  is the customer: What can we do for the customer? What can we do to make the experience better for the customer? How do we have the best customer experience on the planet? That's a mission.
Now an independent consultant  Blankenship was previously a vice president at Tesla Motors from 2010 to 2013  and a vice president of real estate at Apple  working closely alongside  Steve Jobs  to launch the first 165 Apple Stores worldwide before that.
Blankenship recently sat down with Business Insider deputy executive editor Matt Turner to discuss  the visionary leadership of  [TGT] and how   [TGT]   set   [TGT]   companies up for success from the beginning.
At Apple  we looked around at what was going on in the world at the time  and the technologies that were available that weren't in phones of the time. If you went back 10 years ago and you looked at a Motorola flip phone â one of the hottest phones â or the Palm  Nokia  et cetera  they worked  but there was so much more potential.  Steve  just saw so much more opportunity for what this device could be.
 Steve  just saw so much more opportunity for what this device could be.
They had a phone  which then enabled the real disruptive part of that technology  which was the app store. Think about it  for two  three  four years  Apple never advertised the phone; it was "there's an app for that." If you step back  what would Uber be today without a smartphone? What would Facebook be? What  Steve  saw were opportunities with existing things that other people just didn't see.
With Elon  it's very  very interesting talking to  him  because everything really does have a bigger picture to it. You think about Tesla. Well  when I first met with  him  six or seven years ago   he  had this vision  and the vision was to move the planet away from fossil fuels and into renewable resources. Tesla is a part of that  but it's not the whole picture. It's moving people to electric vehicles  but what else could you do? Well  if you're building an electric car you have to have a lot of batteries  so you go to a battery factory. Well  if you've got these batteries what else could you do with them? You could do a battery wall  a battery pack that hangs on the wall â you charge it up and run your house and car off of it. And then what's missing is solar  so a year ago they merged with Solar City.
Now you can take this energy from this great big fusion reactor in the sky  put it in batteries and run your car and your house. It's a bigger picture than what other people are doing. You might ask  well  why don't other car dealers do this? Or why don't other manufacturers do this? It's because they just don't see things the way a  Steve Jobs  and an Elon Musk do â and they have the conviction to make it happen.
Turner: How alike are  [TGT] ?   [TGT]  're almost iconic now. What similarities do   [TGT]   share  and what was it like to work with   [TGT]  ?
Blankenship:   [TGT]   share a lot of the same qualities.   [TGT]   have a conviction and a belief that the direction   [TGT]  're going is right. Regardless of what anybody else says  the direction is right.
Turner: How much of those companies are tied up in the individual? Clearly  Apple exists after  Steve Jobs   but how much of the culture that's there was really  the Steve Jobs culture ? How does  it  survive on after  he 's no longer there? What would you make of Apple today?
Blankenship: When you put together the group of people I just described  those people have a can-do mind-set  that nothing's impossible: "We're doing something bigger than making an electronic device; there's a bigger purpose here." Look at what the results have been of Apple. Yes   Steve  passed away in 2011  but look at the way the company has continued to evolve as a service company: How many millions of iPhone X's do you think they're going to take on order for over the next couple of weeks? It's going to be massive. The company today isn't going through the product innovations on an every three-year basis that it was in the 10 years between 2000 and 2010  but I think it's finding ways that the device has become more personal and more embedded in what you do and how you do it  which aligns you to the platform in an incredible way. Tim [Cook] has done a really good job of doing that.
Turner: What you've described at both Apple and Tesla with  Steve Jobs and Elon Musk  is a mission at the heart of the company and its strategy. Are there any other companies or people you see out there that when you look at them you say  that's the same thing?
Blankenship: I think there are different types of missions. Yes  Elon and  Steve  had their missions. If you look at Amazon  Amazon's mission  without a doubt  is the customer: What can we do for the customer? What can we do to make the experience better for the customer? How do we have the best customer experience on the planet? That's a mission.