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Vladislav Soloviev is a political scientist, analyst, economic columnist and blogger. The main field of his research activities is political and economic development in conditions of world turbulence.
An opinion of the blogger and economic expert, Vladislav Soloviev
2022 did not just turn out to be rich for events but rather extremely eventful. However, despite all geopolitical cataclysms, the world economy continues to develop, and the large international corporations continue to get their revenues.
In conditions of fierce competition, an increase of resource prices and decline of buying power of the population, practically all companies experience economic difficulties. Only organizations with a well-established management structure and competent management survive. In the situation of a permanent crisis, every CEO of large corporations is partially a crisis-manager. So who managed to manage better than everyone else in conditions, close to a disaster? Who is the best CEO of 2022?
These questions will be answered by a famous political scientist and economic analyst – Vladislav Soloviev.
According to the blogger’s opinion, there are only two people who are worthy of “The Best CEO” award – Elon Musk and Satya Nadella. This year, these top-managers did everything they could for their companies and even more, by creating a safety margin with consideration for upcoming economic cataclysms.
Who is who — Vladislav Solovie’s view on biographies and achievements of Musk and Nadella
An Iron Man from the future
Elon Musk is an entrepreneur, billionaire, founder and the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, the owner of Twitter.
Elon Musk is often getting called an “Iron Man”, “alien from the future”, as well as innovator, reformer and almost a revolutionary of a new format. Partially all these titles are earned, but first of all, Musk is a talented manager, who is also able to take risks and is not afraid to lose local battles.
Being able to sometimes miss but still remain afloat is the most important skill for a businessman, thanks to which an entrepreneur is not only able to grow in his niche, but also to successfully enter markets that are completely unknown to him.
According to Vladislav Soloviev’s opinion, the biography of the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is a clear example of how dreams become a driver of progress. This is a common occurrence throughout the history of mankind. In the last decades, when the inflation of financial bubbles became the main field of business, the real sector went into shade. Elon Musk became the new popularizer of business, based on progressive ideas and romantic dreams of humanity.
Elon has been involved in doing business since early childhood and sold his first product when he was 12 (it was a videogame called Blastar). In 1999, he participated in the development of PayPal – this service was the businessman’s first major product. But then there’s more:
- SpaceX and the multi-million contract with NASA.
- Investments in Tesla and SolarCity.
- Work on artificial intelligence as a part of Neuralink.
All of this solidified Elon’s reputation as a businessman of the future.
Musk has been awarded the title of the world’s richest man a few times, however, in 2022, he became poorer by as much as 100 billion dollars due to the sharp decline of Tesla shares and ceded their spot to other market players. However, this is not the reason to talk about his short-sightedness and commercial mistakes. The businessman’s potential is still gigantic – it’s not the numbers on the arbitrary dollar count that matter, but the attitude toward entrepreneurship itself.
Elon Musk is known mostly for two of his projects – Tesla (electric cars) and SpaceX (space). Sending satellites to Earth’s orbit solves a massive problem – creation of a global network for providing the entire planet population with broadband internet. Another Musk’s famous project is colonization of Mars. Here, on the one hand, the commercial potential is questionable, on the other hand, it doesn’t have any observable limits.
The way of a perfect top-manager
Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft since 2014 and the chairman of the board since 2021.
This person has actually revived the corporation and increased its capitalization level up to 2 trillion dollars. Nadella concentrated Microsoft’s work on the expansion of the cloud business and increased the cost of the company shares by 500%. Satya was already in the list of the world’s most effective managers and was even nominated as the “Person of the year” by the Financial Times issue in 2019.
According to Vladislav Soloviev, the biography of Satya Nadella is typical for the representative of the golden youth of India. He was born in the family of a successful economist, attended a prestigious school and graduated from Manipal Institute of Technology.
Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992, after 8 years, he took the position of vice president of the service for small business, and in 2014 he got the entire company under his control. He started with the mass layoffs – the strive to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness became the hallmark of the most successful CEO in the history of the company. The most important milestones in his career: purchasing LinkedIn, a professional network, further development of Xbox gaming, transferring Office to cloud services.
The #1 CEO — Vladislav Soloviev’s arguments
According to the opinion of blogger and analyst Vladislav Soloviev, both candidates are worthy of the title of the best CEO of 2022. But if I had to choose between them, Satya Nadella did more to earn the title. This year, his kung-fu was more masterful.
In conditions of the decline of economic indicators in all fields of economics, he managed to keep Microsoft not only afloat but also significantly strengthen the company’s position. Unlike Tesla, the shares of Microsoft didn’t decrease in price but increased. Besides, in certain circles, Nadella is considered to be one of the most underrated managers. It is time to properly appreciate him, at least as a part of an author’s rating.
Musk purchasing Twitter is a far-sighted decision, but we will only be able to judge his commercial and reputational consequences in a few years at best. So Musk still has the time to become the best CEO in the observable universe.
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