[mft_]

This is something I see people misunderstand time and time again; “innovation” isn’t just inventing an entirely new novel product.

Musk is not about innovation in terms of entirely new products. As other posters have commented, rockets, electric cars, and Internet satellites have all been done before.

Where he seems to be special is having the vision to see opportunities to develop or scale existing products much further than incumbents, and having the confidence/chutzpah/bloody-mindedness to pull it off.

However, through the development required to meet his challenging goals, his teams often need to innovate significantly - this innovation is often exceptional.

And of course, what makes a large-scale global Internet satellite service viable is actually the ability to reuse launch rockets - one of his other major innovations.