Ferrari Case Study

ENZO FERRARI The Making of the Motor Racing and Sport Cars Knowledge Cluster Case study of an inspired leader Piero Formica Taking its place to support the others The complete consort dancing together. Eliot (1970) ‘Little Gidding’ in the Four Quartets In 2002 Ferrari was awarded as the most respected Italian company in the world, according to a survey of more than 1000 top managers in twenty countries across the globe. Ferrari’s legend extends well beyond the automotive world and motor racing and sports-car industry, to reach the broader business community as well as the general public.The legend has been built around the efforts and determination of his founder and mentor, Enzo Ferrari. There is an untold part of the outstanding legacy that Enzo Ferrari left behind him. This is the invaluable contribution he made to the creation of a knowledge cluster in the motor racing and sports car industry. It deserves to be observed that the making of the Ferrari’s knowledge cluster bears much relation to the combined influence of different personalities, all strong and extremely demanding, who, to a greater or lesser extent, shared: Extraordinary ingenuity and sensibility along with a way to face work with humility. †¢ Strong conviction and stubborn determination with which they pursued their objectives. †¢ Awareness of their worth, having started from scratch and knowing that results are obtained with struggle and diligence, not by chance or shortcuts. On top of these traits there was the Ferrari’s anticonformist posture. He was someone who thought for himself. His innovative daring made appealing to him to deal with young men endowed with freshness and imagination. . 1898-1917: On-the-field knowledge and training Since the very early days of his education Ferrari was driven by the tacit knowledge embedded in the field of the father’s experience as a rural metal worker. His father's company, a small foundry, made shed s and gangways for the railroads in Italy. Ferrari was never interested in school. He had aspirations. One of these was to be a race car driver. Ferraris’ on-the-field education produced the cultural space which enabled, nourished and thrived formal education and training in sports-car.The case of Ferrari Owners Club Florida Region – Drivers Education The school is recommended for anyone without significant track experience or not completely familiar with the track, those who have never attended a formal driving school and anyone wishing to simply become a better driver. A morning and after lunch classroom session combined with individual instruction and ample track time will greatly enhance comfort level at speed. Diploma will memorialize accomplishment as a Florida Region Driving School graduate. All drivers will participate in one of three groups:The beginning group is designated for drivers with little or no track experience, who simply wishing to drive on the trac k and enjoy their cars at a very controlled speed. The touring group is intended to allow enjoyment of your car at speeds greater than allowed on public roads. The sport group requires a full FIA rated fire suit including shoes, socks, and gloves. No passengers are allowed. A club approved driving instructor may ride in the car with permission of the track steward. Speeds are not limited but must be well within the capability of the driver and the car.The club reserves the right to determine, at the track, the appropriate run group for any participant. This decision will be based on prior training, experience and demonstrated skills. The track steward's decision will be Final and reflect a concern for the drivers safety as well as the safety of others. 2. At the end of the First World War Building informal and personal relationships, and from the know-nothing land ascending the steep slope of the â€Å"Motor Racing Industry† hill of knowledge Aged barely 20, Ferrari spent muc h of his time frequenting the Bar de Nord on Turin's Ports Nuova, getting to know people and making connections.He aimed at creating trust, fashion, roles, and maximising the joint product of personal relationships within his small groups of peers, interacting informally out of the shop floor. Sharing and learning in the cafe, even playing cards rather than playing by business cards in the meetings: this was a common trait to the founders – in most cases, blue collars and technicians – of small companies in Italy. Ferrari got a job with CMN, a fledgling carmaker which concentrated on converting commercial vehicles left over from the war. His duties included test driving which he did in between delivering chassis to the coach builder.Through this association he got the chance to start racing himself at a time when drivers were far from the celebrity figures they would subsequently become (ironically) under the patronage of team owners like Enzo Ferrari. In 1920 he finis hed second at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo in Targa Florio. Although Ferrari was a good racer, his talent was in the direction of organisation and handling of small details. 3. 1920s 3. 1 Creation of the Ferrari’s community of knowledge practice[1] Throughout the 1920's Ferrari spent a lot of time judiciously massaging his commercial and engineering connections.He also began surrounding himself with a loyal cabal of close collaborators, including Gioacchino Colombo – the man who would eventually design the first Ferrari car after masterminding the Alpha 158s under Ferrari's patronage – and former Fiat technician Luigi Bazzi, a man who would survive into the 1960's as possibly Enzo's longest-standing lieutenant, having originally joined him in 1923. Bazzi had joined Alfa Romeo as long ago as 1922 after a spell in Fiat's experimental department, and would later become tagged as the man who conceived the fearsome twin-engined Alfa Romeo ‘Bimotore' in the 1930's . . 2 Team building by an autocatalytic process: Transforming personal knowledge into organisational knowledge Ferrari ‘made’ Bazzi and Bazzi ‘made’ Ferrari. Not only Bazzi was a valued technical guiding hand, but also his long association with Enzo Ferrari enabled him to help smooth over the differences of opinion and temperamental problems which made working with his boss an increasingly unpredictable, sometimes tempestuous, challenge in later years. Through dialogue and discussion cognitive conflicts and disagreement were raised, which questioned the existing premises.This made possible the transformation of personal knowledge into organisational knowledge. During the time with Alpha Romeo, Bazzi was also responsible for tempting the highly respected engineer Vittorio Jano to leave Fiat to join the rival firm. Bazzi, who had also worked with Fiat, was at least partly responsible for persuading Ferrari that Jano was the right man for the job. Within month s of joining Alfa, the ex-Fiat man was putting the finishing touches to the historic supercharged 2-litre P2, which made its competition debut in 1924. 3. 3 Creative creation by unexpected events: The origin of the Prancing Horse logo 7th June 1923: a sequence of events gave rise to what is unquestionably regarded as one of the most widely identified logos used by any car maker in history. That day Ferrari won the first Savio circuit, which was run in Ravenna, Italy. After the event, a man elbowed his way through to the front of the excited crush immediately surrounding Ferrari and shook the winner warmly by the hand. It turned out that this was the father of Francesco Baracca, the legendary First World War Italian fighter ace who shot down no fewer than 35 enemy planes during the conflict.Baracca's squadron had sported a shield in the centre of which was a prancing horse. Subsequently Ferrari met Francesco Baracca’s mother, Countess Paolina. One day she said to him, â€Å"F errari, why don't you put my son's prancing horse on your cars; it would bring you luck. † Thus was born the famous ‘Prancing Horse' logo. The horse was black and has remained so. Ferrari added the canary yellow background because it is the colour of his town, Modena. 4. 1930s-1940s Clarity of vision and ambitious goals at the heart of Ferrari’s visionOver the 1930s Scuderia Ferrari was a small, autonomous division of the Alpha Romeo Company. At the heart of Ferrari's disagreement with Alfa Romeo was the Milanese company's intention to re-enter motor racing under it's own name in 1938, the Alfa Corse organisation absorbing the Scuderia Ferrari operation and transferring the Tipo 158 development – which was essentially a Ferrari design and concept – back to Milan. Enzo Ferrari clearly felt affronted by this challenge to his own personal domain. His ego urged him to go his own way. Ferrari abandoned the existing patterns and practices.He did something when people said it is crazy to do it. 5. The origin of knowledge pools and a knowledge cluster of motor racing entrepreneurs: long-standing rivalry and co-operation Interpersonal collaboration across multiple boundaries – across cultures, functions, rivalries, geography – featured in a mix of rivalry and co-operation between motor racing entrepreneurs. Which gave birth, first, to knowledge pools and, then, to a knowledge cluster[2]: The springboards for innovation through collaboration, rivalry and creative imitation.In a personality-driven context, the key players were ‘strong heart’ individualists endowed with a hedgehog-minded[3] personality, who relate everything to a single central vision and focus maniacally on executing it. By raising rivalry but also building relationships among people, they made changes happened beyond the conventional wisdom horizon. 5. 1 The healthy rivalry Bitter rivals to fellow Modena racing entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari were th e Maserati brothers, the founders of Maserati in Bologna, Italy in 1914.The Trident trademark that still identifies Maserati cars today was designed by Mario, the artist among the Maserati brothers, who drew his inspiration from the Giambologna statue of Neptune in Bologna's main town square. Sold the company to the Orsi family of Modena just before the Second World War, the firm was then moved to Modena where it is still based today. The brothers remained as technical collaborators for 10 years until 1948. In 1947, Enzo Ferrari founded the company that bears his name in Maranello, a few kilometres south of Maserati.This marks the beginning of their long-standing rivalry. Enzo Ferrari and Maserati brothers felt themselves reciprocally free when kept apart from one another in creating a new tier of intra-domain business in the motor racing and sports-car industry. The challenge, which displayed itself in constant new models with original technical solutions, developed along the roads where Maserati could construct a series of excellent versions in terms of performance but less extreme and aggressive than Ferrari.Customers started to make their choices known: they were looking for a flexible and refined automobile, opting for the more conservative colours of the Maserati and for the increased on-board comfort and liveability which Ferrari had neglected in favour of sporty essentials. Yet, the same forces that kept apart the founding fathers later on bound up the inheritors and successors. Once involved in relationships with one another, they were no longer free: They were part of the inexorable stream. Today Ferrari owns Maserati and together they form a specialised ndustrial group that is unique in the world. The two makes compete in complementary market sectors with cars that have different characteristics. While Ferrari offers compact two-door coupe and spiders for street use, which find their origins of design in the advanced laboratory of Formula 1, Maserat i works in a different way. Maseratis, with equal technology to Ferrari, offer performance that is less extreme and a level of comfort and everyday usefulness that allows it to stand out as an authentic grand touring vehicle of the highest level.Maserati and Ferrari have not lost the healthy rivalry of long ago. 5. 2 The golden handshake ‘The Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market must be accompanied by an invisible hand shake’. Over the past five decades, Ferrari and Pininfarina have had the world's best-known and most influential association between an automotive manufacturer and a design house. Though Enzo Ferrari and Battista Pininfarina yearned to work with each other in the early 1950s, the road to international stardom was hesitant to start. †Ferrari was a man of very strong character,† Sergio Pininfarina recalls. Therefore, Mr. Ferrari was not coming to Farina in Turin, and my father was not going to visit him in Modena, which was approxima tely 120-130 miles away. So they met halfway in Tortona. That fateful rendezvous would alter the world's automotive playing field. â€Å"Everything became extremely easy once they sat down at the table,† Pininfarina continues. â€Å"They never spoke about any type of price. Both were very enthusiastic, for each thought, ‘This will be great ‘ It was, ‘I will give you one chassis, and you will make one car. † The first steps were tentative, much like two outstanding dancers being paired for the first time. The initial effort yielded a handsome perfectly proportioned 212 Inter cabriolet that had its official public debut at 1952's Paris Auto Show. References Amidon, D. (2003), The Innovation SuperHighway, Butterworth-Heinemann, New York Berlin Isaiah (1953), The Hedgehog and the Fox, Simon & Schuster, New York, Crow, James, T. (1981), Ferrari's Early Years. Road & Track: 44 Forgacs, David and Robert, Lumley (1996), Italian Cultural Studies an Introductio n, Oxford University Press.Oxford Formica , Piero (2003), Industry and Knowledge Clusters: Principles, Practices, Policy, Tartu University Press: Chapter 2 Galt, Tony (1997) Lecture Italy, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Levin, Doron P. (1988), Enzo Ferrari, Builder of Racing Cars, is Dead at 90. New York Times, August 16. Section D23 Moritz, Charles (1968), Current Biography. 1968. New York: H W Wilson Company: 120- 122 Vorderman, Don (1980), The Man, The Myth, The Machine, Town & Country. February: 26, 30, and 34 Web sites Ferrari History http://www. thecollection. com/new/maserati/history. htmHistory of Ferrari in Formula One http://home. clara. net/nigelk/history. htm Interview with Sergio Pininfarina, Automobilia, Milano, 1997 http://www. pininfarina. it/eng/history/cooperation/ferrari2. html Nre, Doug, An Appreciation of Enzo Ferrari, in: Prova on-line Ferrari magazine Http://www. prova. com/ (look under â€Å"Editorials†) 51st Annual Pebble Beach concours d'eleganc e – 19 Agust 2001 http://www. pininfarina. it/eng/press/edition/14. html Ferrari Owners Club Florida Region – Drivers – Educationhttp://www. focfloridaregion. com/education. htm ———————– 1] A community of knowledge practice is a constituency of many different characters. This community helps to harness the creativity and promote cross-fertilization of ideas necessary for innovation (Formica 2003: Chapter 2; Amidon, 2003). The notion of communities of practice originated with John Seely Brown, the director of Xerox Corp. ’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Brown suggested that â€Å"At the simplest level, they are a small group of people who’ve worked together over a period of time†¦ not a team, not a task force, not necessarily an authorized or identified group†¦They are peers in the execution of ‘real work’.What holds them together is a common sense of purpose and a r eal need to know what the other knows†. [2] Different communities of knowledge practice coalesce in a knowledge pool. Different knowledge pools form a knowledge cluster (Formica, 2003: Chapter 2). [3] â€Å"The Greek poet Archilochus says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’. The hedgehog’s vision is of one, of a single substance. The hedgehog is a monist† (Berlin, 1953).