The only skill you need as a founder; To deconstruct and reconstruct any problem!

"I don't have the experience but I'm qualified!"  This is the answer Elon Musk would have given, had he not founded SpaceX and some board members of the company were interviewing him for the role of CEO and CTO of SpaceX and Product Architect of Tesla Motors. 

Truth to be told, he does not have the experience, nor the education to be the product architect of an automobile and/or a rocket manufacturing company. But nevertheless he delivers or better said he over-delivers again and again. December of 2015 marked the historic event that his SpaceX vertically landed a space-traveled rocket on earth and sure enough the rocket is ready to fire again. His Tesla Motors is disrupting the auto industry and earlier in his career, he and bunch of his friends disrupted the payment industry. 

All that has been done without a single day spent at any of the financial industry giants (e.g., Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, etc). Nor he lived in Detroit or Germany (so that he can work for the likes of Ford Motors and BMW). Certainly he has no background at NASA or Russian space programs. In summary, he does not have the experience but he qualifies! So how does one solve this dichotomy? ​

The short answer is that people like Elon Musk have a special power. Don't get too excited you Nerds! I'm not talking about Tony Stark's magnetic chest plate that Elon Musk owns (boom... you get what I did there). Some people in strategic consulting industry call his power "problem-solving". Others call it "design thinking" based on empathy. Hell, some people in food industry call it "molecule gastronomy". What do all these seemingly random examples I am listing here have in common with Elon Musk? They all poses the power to follow a deconstruct-reconstruct process when dealing with complex problems. These people have the ability to simplify a complex matter to its bare minimum structure (deconstruct) and then design a better version based on a new set of logic and norms (reconstruct). Simply, they start asking the "why" question repeatedly to peel the onion layer by layer:

1. Why space travel hasn't happened just yet? Because there are many unknown variables to space travel and human being don't know how to overcome those.
2. Why? Because it needs lots of sophisticated technology that has't been developed just yet.
3. Why? Because it is expensive to develop that technology?
4. Why? Because every time we build something that succeed at space travel we have to let it go in the space and that's expensive.
5. Oh, so if we build the technology in a way that it can come back to earth it will be cheaper and we can use the extra money to advance space travel. 
6. Ok, let's build that thing! So who know why can't we bring back the pieces of technology we build back to earth... 

You get what I'm trying to say? Elon Musk and people like him have the power to ask the "why" question several times in order to deconstruct a problem to its bare minimum and then reconstruct a better version. Most people unknowingly learn this process through experience. That's what it means to be an experienced guru in a field. Drawing from many years of experience, one immediately knows the bare minimum skeleton behind an issue. He has seen it in the past and when facing the problem, his experience tells him where to look at and how to solve the problem. But there is another way! You don't need to have the experience to solve a complex problem in any field. People like Elon Musk just use their power and deliver again and again. While most people draw from their experience, Elon-type people draw from their deconstruct-reconstruct power. 

Owning or not owning the power of deconstruct-reconstruct process splits our workforce into two types of people:  (type 1) those who draw from experience in their specific field of expertise, (type 2) those who draw from their special power and succeed at any field. Which one are you? If you are a type 2 person, you are most probably a better fit to become an entrepreneur. You naturally feel qualified for a wide range of roles and responsibilities but hit the wall of type 1 people and cannot pursue too many ventures in the corporate world. 

However, more importantly, if you are a type 1 person, I'd like to leave you with two takeaways:

1. You could become a type-2 person. You could poses the power to be qualified to do anything you want. The deconstruct-reconstruct power is not an innate skill. Although being naturally curious helps, but one can earn the power by doing. Learn to ask the "why" question repeatedly and never take a solution or a process for given. Peel that onion and deconstruct it to its bare bone every time you deal with a complex problem. You will gradually learn to do it. Reading about "design thinking" or "problem solving" techniques would also help tremendously.
2. While you learn to be a type 2 person and if you are hiring or choosing a new team member, keep an eye for those type 2 people. Rejecting people based on experience and not seeing the key words (e.g., name of companies, universities and common nomenclature in the field) on the resumes will filter out people with Elon Musk level caliber and quality. Worst is if you are using a software to read through resumes or rely on recruiters without a deep understanding of the problems the candidate must be able to solve in his role, then you are most certainly filtering our Elon Musks' of your field. Are you sure you want to do that?