Teamwork for innovation

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-launches-neuralink-to-connect-brains-with-computers-1490642652?mod=djem_jiewr_IT_domainid

Jiahao Yang  4/21

Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX has come up with a new company called Neuralink Corp. This company aims to connect human brain and computer with tiny electrodes implanted in human brains so that human can exploit more of their brains.

Within the team, according to the article, they have great talents like Vanessa Tolosa, an engineer and an expert in flexible electrodes; Philip Sabes, a professor who studies how the brain controls movement; and Timothy Gardner, a professor at who is known for implanting tiny electrodes in the brains of finches to study how the birds sing. This is the diversity of the talents in the team. Expert that study brains, electrodes and implanting electrodes are together to cooperate. And also Elon Musk, who’s an experienced CEO that may serve as the project manager between these diverse functional teams.

As for team leader, the article predicts that Elon Musk would be demonstrating great leadership with a broad personal bandwidth. He already succeeded in building the largest battery factory for electric vehicles and launching rockets. So that he has proven leadership in different areas, Neuralink will also benefit from his leadership power.

Software support of Neuralink is as important as hardware. If this project is going to launch successfully, the technology of building better neural interfaces and developing  implantable neural interface is important. This is the first step of getting the electrodes into human brains. If this fails, no matter how good the electrodes they develop, it would be useless if it can’t be implanted.