Benedetto Vigna, innovation at Ferrari and the new team principal after Binotto: “Everything flows” – Corriere.it

Names for the aftermath Mattia Binotto, when will he be nominated? “2,500 years ago Heraclitus said: ‘Everything flows'”. Benedetto Vigna, the managing director of Ferrari, replies with a joke on the sidelines of the inauguration of the academic year of the Milan Polytechnic. What he had to say he has already put in black and white in the statement with which the team principal was dismissed. The “selections” for the new head of Gestione Sportiva proceed in silence, Fred Vasseur remains in a good position, but there are also other names in the squad.

Vigna dribbles the events of F1, but from the beautiful speech delivered in front of an audience of students, authorities, entrepreneurs and industrialists, his vision for the Ferrari of the future and his way of understanding leadership clearly emerge. «All companies are going through a profound, digital and ecological transformation. There are companies where you think you know everything, while everything is flowing, and what matters instead is the ability to establish an unstable balance. Arrogance, the fear of getting naked, are real obstacles for innovation».

Concepts explained with great clarity in the lectio at the Milanese university that the Lucan physicist knows well: «This is the city where I got married, where I became a father, by a strange twist of fate I lived in via Brioschi, who was the founder of the Polytechnic». He has a dry and fast style, he passes from Galileo (“The scientific method is the basis of innovation, we have a duty to recover it in Italy”), recalls his first boss “Bruno, who is here with us and taught me the value of innovation”.

He starts by showing a photo of a Ferrari, the 499P, the Hypercar born to win again at Le Mans: «This car is the result of many skills, and a lot of it comes right from the Polytechnic. Ferrari is tradition, innovation and passion». He continues on the philosophical line: «The difficulty of innovation lies in the pain of man: often those who propose new ideas are seen as someone who goes astray». He cites examples of the Wii, the Nintendo console that “revolutionized video games by opening up to an audience that didn’t use them before”. Thanks to one of the sensors that Vigna himself helped to create when he was at ST Microelectronics. The head of Intel always said: «Be paranoid». And to this motto I added: «Be always paranoid».

Vigna recalls Mauro Forghieri, “an example of an innovator to whom Ferrari owes a lot”. He projects a slide with a red car from the late 60s equipped with a small wing on F1: «This man gave wings to F1». It talks about the challenges of tomorrow for Maranello: for the industry, the logic of the three Ps (People, Planet, Profit): «We will get to zero CO2 emissions by 2030, we make unique cars and we will continue to make them in a more ecological way starting from production. We will never make one with autonomous driving».

He concludes by recalling Enzo Ferrari: «Keeping the desire for progress alive is the legacy he left us and we must carry it forward». A path that also includes a return to victories in F1. But there’s time for that, the team principal must be appointed first.