In that moment in 2008, Elon Musk stood at the edge of the cliff. Tesla and SpaceX both faced imminent disaster—repeated technical failures and dwindling funds. The voices on Wall Street and Silicon Valley were harsh: scammers, lunatics, gamblers. But he refused to give up. He convinced capital with one grand story after another, betting everything on the fourth rocket launch. He won the gamble. NASA's contract came through. A resurrection.

The irony is this: almost every country wants its own Elon Musk, but going back more than a decade, which society around the world dared to let one person repeatedly blow up rockets and keep pouring money on the brink of a funding collapse?

The story is similar to that of Steve Jobs in his youth. Bad temper, prickly personality, the kind of person Silicon Valley would rather ignore. He fell countless times, but someone always was willing to bet on him. In the end, he became a legend.

There are also people like this domestically. Jia Yueting over a decade ago was into ecological car manufacturing, with ideas so ahead of their time that few could understand. Within a few years, he was kicked out by the market. But now, look at what those big tech companies are doing? Their approach is no different from his back then. It’s just that a new era has arrived, and the environment suddenly permits it.

The key difference is actually quite brutal: can a society truly tolerate the failure of explorers? How high is the tolerance for mistakes within a system?

In a soil that emphasizes guaranteed wins, where success is king and failure is the enemy, it’s very hard to cultivate true business leaders. But in places that allow room for error, failure itself is part of trial and error. That’s the real secret to nurturing heroes.