This case was worked cold, using the MIT Sloan study on Ferrari's "controlled growth" strategy, no outcome, no hindsight, just the facts as they stood in mid-2025.
The central question
In mid-2025 Ferrari had a public number attached to its name: 40% of the lineup electric by 2030. The case that lays this out doesn't resolve the underlying tension. It ends with CEO Benedetto Vigna still asking it: how do you grow a brand built on scarcity and a screaming V12 in a world moving toward silence.
Key ideas
I sorted five signals before writing anything down.
Identity risk (negative). Ferrari's entire emotional proposition is built on the engine. Electric removes the thing the brand is actually selling.
Hybrid resale erosion, 20–25% (neutral). Not evidence against electric specifically, a plausible middle-ground problem, the kind that hits products stuck between two clear identities.
Competitor demand signals, Bentley, Aston Martin pulling back (negative, but instructive). Not because "everyone else is doing it," but because it's a live experiment already running. Bentley and Aston Martin can be the lesson, not the excuse.
Rivals slowing their own EV timelines (opportunity, not neutral). A market where competitors hesitate is a market where hesitation is cheaper to correct than to repeat.
Tesla's presence in the category (negative). If a Ferrari customer wants electric specifically, the brand has to answer a harder question than "why buy a car", it has to answer "why this car, and not the one already synonymous with electric performance."
My synthesis
None of those five signals were the real question, though. The real question was buried under them: why electric, specifically? Not whether Ferrari should change, that's not in dispute anywhere in the case. Whether electric is what Ferrari's own customers are actually asking for, or just the assumption the whole industry inherited because everyone else is doing it.
That's where the verdict landed: slow down. Not retreat, the electric platform was already being hand-built in Maranello, and that continues either way. Just don't force a 40% target onto a customer base whose actual behavior, a collector buying one electric model out of curiosity, not swapping out the whole garage, doesn't support that pace.
What happened next
Seven months later, Ferrari cut its 2030 electric target from 40% to 20%, rebalancing to 40% combustion, 40% hybrid, 20% electric. The stock dropped about 15% in a single day, its worst since going public. Investors had priced in a faster shift than the one Ferrari actually delivered.
I don't think this proves the case analysis was right in any strong sense. Ferrari's real decision had internal sales data, dealer feedback, and engineering constraints no casebook reproduces. What it shows is narrower: working from a small set of honestly sorted signals, refusing "everyone else is doing it" as a reason on its own, and asking the question one level down, landed in the same direction the company itself took.
Questions I still have
Was electric ever the right question, or just the assumption the whole industry inherited because everyone else was doing it?
How much of this verdict would survive contact with the internal sales data, dealer feedback, and engineering constraints no casebook reproduces?
Final perspective
The lesson worth keeping isn't to trust a gut call. It's this: don't answer what a company should do before answering why it needs to do anything at all. Most bad strategy calls aren't failures of analysis. They're failures to question the premise before accepting it.
If you'd like to read more about the case, here it is: Ferrari 2025, MIT Sloan case (PDF)