Sustainability Is Fueling Innovation at Ferrari

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy—case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business.

Ferrari is synonymous with tradition, luxury, and speed—not necessarily sustainability. But under CEO Benedetto Vigna, the company is aiming to go carbon neutral by 2030. To him, this is both a moral obligation and an opportunity to innovate.

In this episode of Cold Call from 2023, Harvard Business School professor Raffaella Sadun joins Vigna and host Brian Kenny. They discuss her case study on how Ferrari is using sustainability as a strategic advantage.

BRIAN KENNY: We’re going to start today Raffaella with the question I always start the podcast with. Can you tell us what the central issue is in the case, and what’s your cold call is to start the discussion?

RAFFAELLA SADUN: So the central issue of the case as you described, is a company, an iconic company that is now embarking on a new carbon neutrality strategy. It’s a dramatic shift if you want, in what the company plans to do over the next few years in terms of both its product range, introduction of the first electric Ferrari as well as, and probably the part that intrigued me the most, the internal changes that Benedetto and the rest of the Ferrari team is planning to become carbon neutral by 2030.

BRIAN KENNY: I think I know a little bit of the answer to the next question, but I’m wondering how you heard about this and why you decided to write the case.

RAFFAELLA SADUN: How did I hear about it? Well, because I was lucky and one day I saw Benedetto’s face on a Zoom call and as an Italian I just couldn’t resist and asked him, “Benedetto, I think we should really write a case about Ferrari.” And what surprised me is that Benedetto said, “Yes, but I really wanted to talk about sustainability,” which is something that surprised me.

BRIAN KENNY: And we’re going to get to Benedetto in a minute, but before we do that, I know you visited the plant in the process of writing the case, I’d love to hear a little bit about what that experience was like, and then you can maybe comment on where Ferrari sits in the landscape. Who are their competitors?

RAFFAELLA SADUN: So, the visit to the plant and in the audience today we also have Leila Doumi who is a PhD student and was with me when we visited the plant. I just can’t tell you how exciting this was. I almost was divorced by the way because my husband who is a mechanical engineer couldn’t make it and he was very, very jealous about me being there. You don’t expect a company that makes cars to have that amount of passion, excitement through engagement. And on the one hand you see they tell you, “This is where Enzo Ferrari was watching the cars,” and you immediately realize, “I’m in the middle of history here.” Okay, so that’s one. But then it’s something very tangible and it’s today and you see how people work together. You walk into the production floor with these cars coming from the conveyor belt from the top coming down and teams of workers that work seamlessly. When I teach this case, I tell my students, “I know it feels weird to say it, but I have rarely seen a place as harmonious as the production plant of Ferrari.”

BRIAN KENNY: That’s amazing. Benedetto, let me turn to you for a moment. Again, welcome. It’s great to have you here on the wall. We wish you could be here in person, but it’s great to have you on the wall. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? I teased a little bit by talking about the fact that you’re a physicist. I don’t know how many people expected that, but tell us a little bit about your background.

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Thank you. Nice talking to you. Despite that it is digital. I am a physicist so I prefer the 3D analog world, not the 2D dimensional digital world. Anyway, you said it. I mean, I studied physics. At the beginning my idea was to be in a university, but then I realized it was better for me to do some research in companies and create products that could reach the market so I switched it to a company making chips. In your mobile phone, there are a lot of sensors of any kind. Well, that is what I did with my team. It took me around 20 years to create a business and industry that was not existing. And then let’s say after I’ve been traveling little bit here and there and meeting several people, I get to know the chairman of Ferrari and the vice chairman, they offered me this opportunity and here I am, I am the CEO Ferrari and I’m working with different people, but in any case, people like I did always in my career.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s wonderful. Raffaella, I’m going to ask you a question that might make Benedetto a little uncomfortable, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Can you describe for us what his leadership style is? How are the people who work at Ferrari describe him?

RAFFAELLA SADUN: I never asked for a formal description, but I can tell you what I saw and what I saw is a couple of things that impressed me. The first one is respect, of course, as you would expect, but I also was very impressed by the fact that people felt empowered. And so it’s really this combination of on the one hand, knowing that you’re dealing with a scientist who’s very focused on understanding the concreteness of the production process, in this case of the sustainability strategy and going to the metrics in a way that perhaps people that don’t have that scientific background would not be able to. But then at the same time a very strong sense of being also feeling respected by the CEO. And I think that in the case we described, Benedetto spends time with both his management team, but it’s also very visible, more visible than I would say the average CEO to the people who are on the shop floor. And he has engaged them in competitions to elicit their ideas, which I think really made a lasting impression on the team.

BRIAN KENNY: Benedetto, let me turn back to you.

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Thank you.

BRIAN KENNY: Let me turn back to you for a second. I’m just curious. I looked up in the research for the podcast, I looked at Ferrari’s online to see what kind of Ferrari I would buy. Needless to say, I can’t buy any Ferraris. Who buys a Ferrari? What’s your customer base?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Not yet.

BRIAN KENNY: Not yet.

RAFFAELLA SADUN: I mean, the Lego Ferrari is available to both of us.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s true. Who buys your cars?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: There is one sentence. We like to say the different Ferrari for different moments and different Ferrari for different Ferraristi. This is what is driving our strategy. And if you want what we are doing, we all the people here, we are starting always from the emotion that our client want to have when they drive the cars. People very often talk about technology, people talk about all the trends today in automotive, people talk about autonomous, shared connected electric cars. What instead we like to say is that we are a luxury company that makes cars. And there are four clear trends that are for us very important. One is we want our car to be really highly personalized. We want our car to deliver a unique emotional experience. We want our car to be sustainable. And we want our car to be culturally relevant. This is Ferrari. Ferrari is a luxury company, it’s not an automotive company. If there is a message I would like to leave here is that we are not making cars, we’re making a luxury product and cars are part of what we do.

BRIAN KENNY: That actually gets to another question that I had in mind for you, which is tell us how sustainability is on brand for Ferrari.

BENEDETTO VIGNA: I believe that a luxury company that is doing, let me say emotional product, a symbolic product, we don’t make a functional product because nobody’s going to take a Ferrari to the supermarket. What’s important is the social license and the social license can come from us showing to the entire world that we can be scientific, we can have an holistic approach to the sustainability and we want to be sustainable by end of this decade. This is very important. It’s a commitment, it’s a way to tell the entire world, “Look, it’s difficult, we know,” but we want to show the world that we can do it.

BRIAN KENNY: Let’s talk about sustainability, Raffaella, in the automotive… We’ve done other cases on cold call about other automotive makers that have put a stake in the ground around sustainability. Can you talk a little bit about what’s driving this in the automotive industry?

RAFFAELLA SADUN: Yeah, I mean especially in Europe we have a very strong regulatory push that as you know, we have very strict targets that are felt and are having a very big impact on how large and small… and we can see also with Ferrari niche automotives are thinking about their future. And I think that these are very strict targets that however are not… the uncertainty here is are they feasible and do they match with the production capabilities that current companies have? So you can see there is a tremendous amount of anxiety now and pushback that is coming from this push.

BRIAN KENNY: Benedetto, can you talk a little bit about these targets? And I’m curious also about Ferrari’s carbon-neutral commitment and how people reacted to that. How did your investors react? How did your customers react? How did your suppliers react when you made that statement?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: I would say that we have a different reaction for different players in our range. I have to say that the investor was pleased by our commitment very much, they like it. The people here in Maranello, the employees, they like it. They like this challenge and that’s the reason why Raffaella, when she interviewed them, she saw that they were all on it. When it comes to supplier, it depends a little bit. There are suppliers that are more, let’s say, that are already on the journey. One are the suppliers that they believe that it’s not a true problem, a real issue. And some others stated that they are willing to get some support from us. Clearly you can guess what is our point of view in front of suppliers that do not believe that this is something to work on. Different mix of feelings. We are making a selection and we want to work with suppliers that are working in a scientific and holistic way like we are doing on this important topic of this sustainability.

BRIAN KENNY: How much change does that require from your suppliers? Do they have to do things quite differently than they’ve done it in the past?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: But very often I can tell you that some suppliers are scared simply because they do not know the metric. It’s funny because sometimes you meet some suppliers that are proud of their sustainability report, but then apart from the fact that they spend a lot of money to print a lot of things on expensive paper, there are not too many numbers in it. But very often I have to say more than 80% of our suppliers are willing to join us in this journey and to see how we can challenge each other. As always, you have the people that are willing to embrace the new challenge, then there are people who do not embrace it. I can tell you based on my experience that the people that are embracing this challenge on our supply chain are more than what I expected. And as you can imagine, it’s not easy but they are on it.

BRIAN KENNY: Raffaella, the case points out that the primary goal at Ferrari is not about market share, it’s not about volume. We know they only make about what 11, 12,000 cars a year. So if it’s not about market share and it’s not about volume, what’s it about?

RAFFAELLA SADUN: Ferrari is about an experience, I think, that’s what I came to understand. And Benedetto articulated this point very much earlier very well. It is about feeling part of a community for the Ferraristi. I think there is very much about the car as much as the events and the racing and we talk about these other events and then there is also this symbolic meaning that Ferrari has for all the people like us, we don’t have a Ferrari, but somehow perhaps I’m Italian but I’m sure that this is true also for other nationalities, there is a sense of affinity with a brand that is so historic. Now this is what’s visible to us. Where Benedetto was going before, which to me was the most intriguing part of the case is what Ferrari means for the supply chain and for the employees as well. And there we get to something that is even more personal than what you and I can experience from the outside. And I don’t know if… This is at least what is palpable when you’re there.

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Raffaella, you’re right. It was in Christmas 2021 and unfortunately we could not have an event where all of us are together physically. So the communication department had a great idea and the idea was that all the people of Ferrari, all the employees, would build in a puzzle of a prancing horse. We have it. Next time you come here I’ll show you. It’s a big prancing horse that is standing in front of our canteen. And all the employees, while they were completing the prancing horse puzzle, they were saying something. What does it mean Ferrari for you? And Ferrari means many different things, but there are some common answers, “Ferrari is my life. Ferrari is my family. Ferrari is community.” And this is something like Raffaella was saying that you experience when you’re part of the family. We have different family members, we have many stakeholders from the Ferraristi, the client, to the fan, any kind of the shareholder, the media, the university, and the students. It’s a unique company where we have many different kinds of stakeholders. It’s a community feeling.

BRIAN KENNY: How do you find your employees and what’s it like to work at Ferrari?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: I can tell you that there is a unique sense of belonging in the company that is not easy to describe. You can understand when you live it. But I can see from the eyes of the colleagues, these last years have not been easy because of on the supply side. For example, we had the Ukraine wars, we had the shortage of chips, we had the problem of the COVID. But I can tell you that we did not stop our production line for a single second while many other industrial players were suffering of it and consider that sometimes being a small player because we don’t buy a lot of things, we could have been suffering more. But because of this sense of belonging, because of this unique attachment to the company, we’ve been able to go through without any disruption. This is something that I am always thankful to all of them. And indeed, indeed, the 13th of November we took, we published some initiatives that are pretty unique. For example, I want to give shares to all the employees from first to last. After the share program opened to all the employees, we also gave a lot of many other benefits to say thanks to all of them for what they’re doing, for where they’re helping to bring the company. This is very important.

RAFFAELLA SADUN: Can I pause on this for one moment?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Yes.

RAFFAELLA SADUN: Not to be the boring strategy professor, but I am a boring strategy professor so I can do that.

BRIAN KENNY: Not boring at all.

RAFFAELLA SADUN: What is interesting here is the following, we are talking about a differentiated strategy. You cannot get more differentiated than Ferrari, but what this case tells you is that as much as it’s important to create surplus for the customer, I think that the roots of a very successful differentiated strategy stand in how you behave with your employees and with your suppliers. And this is something that often it’s not very clear when people look at brands. What’s the engine that makes this brand valuable over time and continuously?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: When a company’s doing well, all the stakeholders must do well and vice versa. And one thing that I changed when I came in the company is that we can do innovation if we have our suppliers that are in love with what we do because we need also their ideas, their brain cells let me say, to help us to do something unique. And I think this dimension of working together in a team. I am always paying particular attention to this dimension. I was paying attention already in the company was working before, but here I am even paying much more attention because in a luxury company the people are even more important than in other kinds of companies. This is really unique and in this way you have to read all what we are doing, like Raffaella was saying.

BRIAN KENNY: I’m wondering, obviously we’ve talked about the fact that you oversee a brand that’s got tremendous legacy and heritage. How do you think about innovating with a brand like that? Because there’s always the danger that you’re going to leave something behind that people think is really important.

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Look, clearly in a luxury company, the traditional innovation are two dimensions that are equally important. I like to say that we have two eyes. With one eye, we have to look at the past. With another eye, we have to look at the future, and then we need the brain that helps to integrate them and to select what to keep and what instead to bring new. If you want this… One of the most beautiful things of my job together with the team that you have always to balance the past and the new. Many startup companies today, they don’t have any past, so you have to look with two eyes only to the future. But in our case, the future and the past, innovation and tradition, must coexist so that the DNA of the company can evolve through the history.

BRIAN KENNY: Raffaella, we know that millennials care a lot about the products they buy and the firms that they engage, they care a lot about where they work and what those firms are doing to make the world a better place. Do you see this as a brand enhancer for Ferrari? The move to a carbon-neutral?

RAFFAELLA SADUN: That is really the piece that again, I learned a lot writing this case and there is something about using sustainability to push yourself ahead of where the customer is going. There is a customer evolution. Maybe it’s not the traditional fidelity base today that cares about sustainability, but it’s clear that there are changes in the customer base, more women, younger population that will appreciate that. But again, I go back, the real powerful message here is how sustainability can be a catalyst for energy and innovation inside organizations, which is something that I am starting to see now. I think that this case gives you an example, of course Ferrari is an outlier in so many dimensions, but what they’re doing is using sustainability to move the supply chain in a certain direction, co-innovating and sitting down with them, but also to engage their workers in a way that combines innovation and purpose. And that is, I think, a very interesting way of thinking about sustainability.

BRIAN KENNY: Benedetto, can you talk a little bit about that? Maybe give an example of how you’re working both with the suppliers and internally to innovate?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: There are three names now. Scope one, scope two and scope three that all the experts are using. If I see scope one and scope two, it means what we are doing in the company. Well, if I see inside the wall of Maranello, we are doing, two main things. Number one, we see how to become more efficient and number two, we see how to use electricity or energy that is cleaner. I can give you a few numbers. 2022 over 2021, we’ve been able to reduce internally the carbon footprint by 10% despite the fact that we’ve been growing the number of car by almost 15%, it was 2022 over 2021, so this is a big achievement for me. In terms of energy generation, we have been installing a lot of solar panels. We have been promoter of a community that can help to generate more and more clean energy for us but also for the local municipality. We have been starting to use a solid oxide fuel cell so we can use hydrogen. You see, we are looking at different dimensions on the generational side and there are a few ideas that I’m particularly proud of, of my team because the people working in the factory, in the manufacturing line, the one that Raffaella was referring to with zero capital expenditures only by using their brains, their observation, they’ve been able to reduce the aluminum consumption 2023 over 2022 by around 4%. This year we will buy 4% less aluminum than the year before. This is a big achievement. This is what we are doing in the company. Outside the company, we are looking at the logistics. We are giving priority to companies that are using biofuel to move our cars. We are looking also at the material that is very important for us, it is aluminum. Aluminum is more or less 40% of the weight of our Ferrari. And for aluminum we are looking at the companies that are extracting and purifying aluminum. We go through all the steps because we want to be, as I said, scientific and follow an holistic approach. You have to cut the problem in slices and you have to go one by one.

BRIAN KENNY: Raffaella, we know that it’s not easy in any industry, but definitely not in the automotive industry to scale electric vehicle production. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges that we see automotive companies making?

RAFFAELLA SADUN: I’ll tell you the high level because then the scientists should come in and tell us everything about it. I would just want to mention the first one and I think the relevant one, which is the construction of the battery and so that besides the tensions that we are currently facing to get the raw material that is needed to produce these batteries, there is also a whole set of challenges that have to do with the technology to produce the batteries themselves, which at this point are more art than science. That’s how I’ve heard one of these big battery producer companies refer to them, which makes what Ferrari is doing even more interesting because Benedetto, if I’m not mistaken, you guys are bringing part of that battery construction in-house, correct?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: You’re right. We buy the cell and we make the battery in-house because the battery is an interior part of the case. This is fundamental because it is the same story… the airline industry did 100 years ago. One hundred years ago, in the airline industry you had the wings and you had the tank, the gasoline tank and then the wings became the gasoline tank. That’s what we are doing here. The battery itself is becoming an integral part of the car, it’s a structural part. This is very, very important. We have something that is nice to drive, with the right emotional thrill.

BRIAN KENNY: We are getting close to the end of our time together and I’ve got one more question for each of you, but before I ask those questions, I do want to give the folks that are watching this have an opportunity to ask some questions. What I’ll do is I’ll look up at the wall and I’m just going to pick one of you to ask the question that you had sent in a little bit earlier. Unmute and ask your question.

LISTENER ONE: Yes, hi. Hi. This has been really fascinating. My question is, is Ferrari in engaging with the new materials and things it needs from its suppliers, are you collaborating with other manufacturers, whether they’re automobile manufacturers or manufacturing other products? Do you find bringing in other brains even more helpful when dealing with your de-carbonization?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Not directly, indirectly because we participate to some common meetings. I have to say that today the most effective engagement, the most effective way to lower the carbon footprint is mostly through working through tier two, tier three or tier four of the supply chain. Recycled aluminum is the tree of life that we have in all the meeting room here in Ferrari because it remembers that you have to go to the basics, this remembers that you have to talk even with the companies that are digging the ground to get the material for the aluminum. If I have to say what the client, the player directing us in this journey, I wouldn’t put our competitors or other automotive players at the same level. I was thinking to your question, they are maybe the last.

BRIAN KENNY: We have another question.

LISTENER TWO: Hi. I was wondering what is your favorite Ferrari?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Not only one. I would say the next one. I would say the next one. Today, there are a couple that I like a lot is 296 GTS and the Purosangue, but the next one is going to be better.

BRIAN KENNY: We have a question from a listener.

LISTENER THREE: Yes. Hi. I’m wondering if there are other luxury brands that have made the switch to sustainability that you can learn from or you admire and how do you think the rest of the luxury automotive brands will follow? Will they follow in the footsteps making Ferrari a leader? How do you say that will play out?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: There are some other luxury brands that they are looking at it and they were to say it in average. These people, I see them more active than the automotive player for a simple reason because usually luxury brands are not so big either in terms of revenues, either in terms of production material, either in terms of people like automotive player. I mean, consider it an automotive player, forget about Ferrari, we are 6,000 people. But if you take other big names, you’re talking about companies with 100, 200,000 people while luxury brands are not so big. It is much better to steer a small boat than a big boat, especially in a period in which there are rough waves around you. We have this unique advantage like other luxury brands that we want to leverage just because we feel the moral obligation in front of the world to show that this carbon sustainability journey is something that does not exist only on charts, on display, on the internet, but is something that can be made possible.

BRIAN KENNY: I think we’ve got time for one more question. I’m going to go to the Boston Celtics fan that we have on the wall.

LISTENER FOUR: Good morning, everyone. Buongiorno, Dr. Vigna. Question or curiosity, since we talk about differentiate strategists and how has being perceived philosophically the idea to move towards electrification and also the idea to go towards SUV that is like the Purosangue is a gorgeous model, but I think it’s something is definitely a major transition point for you moving from sport car to an SUV concept. I’m curious a little bit about how it’s been perceived internally within the company, this transition towards something that’s a little bit different, maybe more a necessity, but I’m curious about your perspective. Thank you.

BENEDETTO VIGNA: A couple of important messages that I would like to leave in this meeting room before, let’s say we all depart. Number one is that we are following a scientific holistic approach to carbon neutrality. The second one, we don’t make SUV, we make a Purosangue. This is important because that is a sporty car, and if you try it’s really a sporty car. Because an SUV is a sport utility vehicle and Ferrari is not a utility vehicle. We make a Purosangue, yes, but we don’t make a Purosangue for the same reason the mass market players look at it. Because other people why they do SUV? They do SUV because the market is growing. When we are doing a Purosangue simply because we want the people to have and to live in motion together with other friends, other family members, this is the driver. The driver is always the emotional side of our Ferraristi, our client, this is very important. And I have to say that looking at the order portfolio that we have that it goes well beyond 2026 and looking at the market reception, we couldn’t do a better choice in this direction. When it comes to step to the second part, the electric car, I think as I said also in another interview, and as I say also to the investors, we see three possibilities. There are people that will buy only thermal cars. There will be people that will be part of our family only through electric Ferrari. And then we will have a client that will take both, inline with your original question on what is the product strategy: different client, different Ferrari for different Ferraristi, different Ferrari for different moments. So, all in all, I would say that we took a risk one year ago before the capital market day when we said we will keep doing the three kinds of cars, the red, the thermal, the blue, the hybrid, and the green electric because I don’t believe that doing only one car is the right thing. It would be an act of arrogance in front of our client. We have to respect the client. We keep doing, it was a good choice. And if you see now the world is also moving in the direction to welcome both the electrons, let me say electric cars and the e-fuel also internal cars.

BRIAN KENNY: We have time for one more question for each of you and Benedetto, I’m going to start with you. One of the final lines in the case is you pondering, because we always have our protagonists pondering a question. The case actually closes with you pondering about whether or not it was worth it in relation to moving into this EV space in such a determined way. I would ask you, is it worth it?

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Yes, it was and it is, it’s really worth it. And there is one quote that I like a lot from Enzo Ferrari and he says, “To those who come after me, I leave a simple inheritance: the responsibility to keep alive the will to progress that which we pursued in the past.” So, we have for me, if in the past Ferrari had to do cars that were beautiful, high performance, and delivering emotional and driving thrills, now we have to add to these three ingredients. Also, the fourth one that is sustainability. It was really worth it.

BRIAN KENNY: Excellent.  Raffaella, you do get the last word since you wrote the case. And my question is simply if there’s one thing you’d like people to remember about the Ferrari case, what is it?

RAFFAELLA SADUN: That sustainability can be an engine for innovation internally and drive the transformation of the supply chain. But what I find interesting about what they’re doing is that they’re really leveraging sustainability in a scientific way that I think has a potential of driving change throughout the supply chain and internally.

BRIAN KENNY: Raffaella, Benedetto, thank you so much for joining me on Cold Call.

BENEDETTO VIGNA: Thank you all. Have a good day.

HANNAH BATES: That was HBS professor Rafaella Sadun and Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna, in conversation with Brian Kenny on Cold Call.

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