Hiring smart people and seeing market opportunities and executing on those opportunities absolutely are skills. It’s the same sort of skills Hitler had, where most of the genius lies around organising people around a common goal.

A lot of companies either get the smart people, time market opportunities perfectly, or execute perfectly on a clear vision, but very few do all three at the same time and tend to fail. The first (lots of smart people) run out of money, the second is the “too early” group and their ideas get taken by someone else, and the third spends their resources going in the wrong direction.

Elon Musk wasn’t successful because he knows a lot about electric cars or rockets, he was successful because he saw an opportunity, secured enough funding, hired the right people, and focused those people in the right direction.

You can be incredibly smart in one area and incredibly dumb in others. Elon is great at pitching an idea to get funding, and using that funding to hire the right people. He fails when he overrides those smart people.