Chapter 5. Think it through

Ferrari only sells about 4,000 sports cars per year. But at a price tag that can hit €180,000. To keep the quality high, the company actually limits the number of cars it can manufacture in any given period. It apparently wants each car to be of such style and class that the look and feel of Ferrari purrs forth, starting with the powerful vroom of the engine. We’ve wondered, from time to time, how it is that Ferrari can keep up – year after year – such a high standard. It was a premium car company when it first started producing high-powered cars for the masses in 1947. Now, 60 years later, it’s still avant garde.

Mario Almondo, chief of human resources at Ferrari, addressed this subject in an issue of Harvard Business ...

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