Elon Musk isn't just redesigning cars and spacecrafts—he's also revolutionizing the way executives are paid.

On Wednesday, Musk announced his new all-or-nothing compensation plan. Under the plan, Musk could make a lot of money, as much as $55 billion, if he meets an ambitious set of goals by set deadlines. But if those goals go unmet, Musk gets nothing.

It's an unusual and bold plan, one that compensation experts say could be difficult but not impossible to replicate in other companies.

“The kind of companies that would consider looking at this would have audacious growth goals. Think back to Apple when Jobs came in,” said Paul McConnell, managing director and co-founder of Board Advisory, an independent executive compensation consulting firm.

McConnell notes this plan also wouldn't work for “any Joe CEO you bring in from the outside”—a founder with an entrepreneurial mindset has to be leading the company. For founders, he says, retaining control over the company and its direction can be even more important than a big paycheck. So they're willing to take a riskier compensation plan with a higher upside.

And it also helps that Musk doesn't really need a big paycheck, at least not at the moment, notes Brent Longnecker, chairman and CEO of compensation consulting firm Longnecker & Associates. Musk, already worth more than $21 billion, is one of the richest people alive.

“You'll have people who say, 'Well, Elon's already wealthy beyond compensation.' But it's his company so he has different motivations,” Longnecker said. “If it's not someone's company, they would like more guarantee on their money. Not all executives are going to be created equal in this scenario. Be sensitive that Elon is a true icon in business, wealthy beyond imagination.”

While Musk's compensation plan is unorthodox and, for many companies, unattainable, it's also sparked a dialogue about performance-based compensation, in the tech industry and beyond. Longnecker says that no one (as of Wednesday afternoon) has called him wanting the same type of plan, but the compensation world is buzzing.

A similar plan could also be scaled and sculpted to fit non-Tesla businesses—but it wouldn't be easy. Longnecker says while he's seen CEOs tout $1 annual salaries before, they've never been at a company near Tesla's size.

If other large companies do decide to try adopting a personalized Musk-esque compensation plan, legal teams could follow Tesla's lead. According to McConnell, there are four crucial steps for in-house teams making the switch: be careful on governance issues, use outside resources different from the usual people, have the shareholders vote on it and “document the hell out of it.”

“The legal department is going to freak out about this,” McConnell said. “This breaks every rule in the books.”