Exclusive interview: Hadi Al Alawi interviews Benedetto Vigna, CEO of Ferrari. GFOIS 2026 Lake Como

Thank you all to be here. We organized this well Friday evening.

I was coming back from US.

Friday evening basically we organizing the weekend also we found a slot to show you one our latest form to arrange something. I yes I was working at different company was working in different world and for 25 years I was dealing with clients whose product is on the table. Now I had the luck to work with a fantastic team with whom we started up a new business from zero to more than $6 billion per year. We sold 50 billion sensor that are fitting in all your phone. I remember when I was going around and I was proposing these technologies and people were telling me there is no market. In fact there is no market. There are 20 sensors for each home and after that we've been going in many other different fields from cars to space, healthcare, industrial but after what happened in this quarter of century that more and more the final client started to treat the semiconductor people as a slave. What does it mean? you own the application and you tell the semiconductor chief maker what you what they have to do and I did not feel well because I like to be a little bit more creative so I found and I was lucky because I was proposed to this job that I'm doing now where I can with the team we can be creative we can be innovative and we can use the technology thinking to the emotional side of the people Because when you talk about high-tech, it's more transactional. It's more muticalistic approach. When you talk about a product such as Ferrari, well, Ferrari is a product emotionally useful, is not functionally useful. And then I felt a little bit more let's say I recover it. My wife said, 'You were black and white picture. Now you are again a colored picture.' So the problem of the air changing but she also same okay you are changing world since said that I am it's five years I am in I'm very happy because I can know a lot of people from all over the world and dealing with the fire clients in the B2C B2B I found it more nicer more growing for me from a personal and professional point of view. So I took also this opportunity to come here because I could know people from the different network most of I know a few of you maybe two three. So that's the reason why I took this opportunity when Adi proposed me to come here to have this conversation.

I can tell you that when I arrived in Ferrari, I had in my life I have a good I had good teachers and I remember one CEO telling me look the first thing you to do you need to talk to the people. So when I came in Ferrari was September 1st I took for myself in 100 days to talk to 300 people. It was n minus one n minus 2 because I think that the best consultant of the strategy, the best consultant of the way a company is working are the people inside the company. So what I was doing, I was asking the people in 1 hour open discussion and the question was simple. If you were in my shoes, what would you do to improve the way this company is working? And after getting all this feedback and I can tell you there were people never talked to the CEO before for me was easy job without their feedback I wouldn't have been doing the things I did I changed the organization I make it flatter there were nine organizational level from nine I went to five and none of those change I took the test drivers the people that are testing the car if you want these are the first client that tell knew how the company is behaving. They were deep below the CEO and I move up because better than engineers these people understand how the car behaves. I like always to say that if you want to do innovation, technology is important, no doubt, but client is more important. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the client and rethink the way the product you're doing is used. Enjoy was not an engineer. Enjoy was a racer. Steve John was not an engineer. He was a person that started from the final application. So that's what we keep revealing. Technology is important as far as it addresses the real needs or even better it addresses it delights anticipates what the client is waiting for. It's not easy. Sometimes we make mistake in our life but it's important that you recover fast. What is important is that a leader has the responsibility to t and to bring the flag of innovation forward. I did it in my previous business life with the chief because we create a computer market and I'm doing here and in both cases I'm lucky because I have a very good team of people.

I would say that there is one main challenge. We need as a company to continue to put together two dimension the tradition and innovation. We need we are relevant for the current generation. We need to be relevant also for the next generation. I was looking I was listening to the presentation your first lady