A conversation with
Benedetto Vigna

It’s a clear June evening, the air cool and crisp in Castelvetro di Modena, Italy. I’ve just finished dinner with Benedetto Vigna, Ferrari’s CEO since 2021.

When I first met Benedetto—also over dinner, about a year and a half ago—two things struck me, especially considering his role: his unconventional background, and how oddly difficult it was to ask him questions. Not because he was evasive; on the contrary, whether over the phone or at the table, he’s always been open, kind, direct, and intensely engaged in conversation. It’s just that his curiosity is relentless. I end up giving more answers than I have time to ask questions. But that curiosity offers a glimpse into his surprising past: physicist, researcher, but above all, innovator. He’s worked at CERN in Geneva, the Max Planck Institute, and Berkeley. He holds over 200 patents. Not exactly your typical automotive or luxury CEO.

Maybe it’s because I’m driving through the hills just behind Maranello, but to me, the evolution of technology looks like a winding road. For a long time, it’s a straight climb, steady, predictable. Then, suddenly, with just one unexpected curve, you find yourself hundreds of feet higher. This story is one of those hairpin turns.

GG (Giacomo Golinelli) What drove innovation in the early 2000s?

BV (Benedetto Vigna) Innovation, if you think about it, came from trying to simplify how people played. If you remember, using video game controllers back then—you didn’t need to be an octopus, but it helped. There were other reasons too. We had a young guy on the team at STMicroelectronics who had motor disabilities. He couldn’t use a traditional mouse to interact with a computer. And then there were cell phones, which were becoming more common, but still had such small screens that interaction was clunky. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because we’re Italian—and Italians talk with their hands?

GG That might be it: a sensor to map classic Italian hand gestures. But if you had to boil it down, what was the original idea?

BV The core idea was to use movement through space to simplify things—to make interfaces feel more natural. It was basically a 3D mouse. We wanted to change the way people interacted with digital interfaces, to go beyond the flat surface and limited directions of a traditional mouse.

GG Was there a clear, single application you were designing this innovation for from the start?

BV Actually, we were working on the sensor in an abstract way. We also built simple demo applications to test it. One was swapping out the components in existing joysticks—replacing the basic sensors under the analog sticks with motion sensors, accelerometers, tilt sensors—and seeing how they worked with current games.

GG So what’s the story that takes us from those lab experiments to the global revolution of the Nintendo Wii controllers?

BV It’s the moment an idea becomes a business. We knew video games were a natural use case for our invention. And we’d managed to create a sensor cheap enough to fit that market.

Just like the MOS 6502 processor, which this issue of ARCHIVIO celebrates on its 50th anniversary.

But the Europeans and Americans we talked to didn’t really believe in the potential. The Japanese did. Nintendo looked at our tech in 2005. Not only that—they already had games that were a perfect match. It’s almost like we were thinking the same thing, at the same time, in two completely different parts of the world.

Again, the hairpin turn.

GG Something I’m curious about—what does it actually mean to work on a sensor “in the abstract”?

BV Like I said, we had other potential applications in mind too and plenty actually happened. Take the step counter on smartphones, it already existed in Japan in a very basic form. Then there’s the ability to rotate your phone screen based on how you hold it. Or the free-fall detection system in computers: the tri-axis sensor detects when the device is falling and works to minimize data loss on impact. Even washing machines—our sensor helped optimize water and energy use.

GG Final, straight-up question: was what you created really a disruption?

BV In video games—at that time, the most relevant industry for what we were doing—and in the way we interact with digital interfaces, yes, it absolutely was a disruption. There’ve been plenty of improvements since, sure, especially in smartphones. But that invention gave us, and Nintendo, clear leadership for years. We trusted each other—and together we pulled it off.

The recording fades as Benedetto starts explaining the technical side of the invention to me—how the Inertial Measuring Unit works, how it measures six values: three for rotation, three for acceleration. Rotating and accelerating—those are pretty key ideas at Ferrari, too, I think to myself. Same goes for innovation. And for doing something that surprises and delights people, when you really think about it. After all, inventing is just that—and the fivefold increase in patents over the past five years, as Benedetto told me on another occasion, is proof of that. Maybe I’m no longer surprised by the idea of a physicist and inventor running a Ferrari.