Jony Ive helms the most secretive design lab in the world at Apple. But aside from the top secret mystique, the soft spoken Ive is notoriously private, often giving just one interview a year.

Last week at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Fast Company alum Rick Tetzeli performed that interview. The topics covered ranged from how Apple really designs its next iPhone to what it’s like building the future while the blogosphere shares Apple rumors and rants. You can listen to the complete interview on SoundCloud, but, in the meantime, we’ve collected some of Ive’s most notable thoughts–and hottest takes–below.

Apple Is Just People

Apple is the most valuable company in the world, but Ive has kept his design team small. The industrial design team still numbers just 20 in all. And Ive feels that this intimate, long-term approach to team building is what makes the products so successful. It’s this small, tight-knit team that can take an idea from abstraction to corporeal.

I see Apple not as this esoteric brand. Apple to me is just a collection of people, a collection of people who are united with the same set of values and goals. And it’s a very diverse group of people. But the one thing I’ve found is when you’re dealing with abstract ideas, that’s the part of the process that’s probably the most challenging. These ideas are also fragile. That’s the point that’s so important you get to as a team. The team is small enough that you can all communicate what that tentative, very hard to articulate idea is. It gets easier when you can give them body and they become a three-dimensional thing. But way before then, the ideas are extraordinarily tentative. . . . [T]he most significant change happens when you bring into a room a model. A lot of people can’t understand drawings completely. But you go through this dramatic shift where you go from something that was fairly exclusive to suddenly you have something which is inclusive, which can suddenly galvanize people–[though] at least they’re looking at the same thing, rather than just looking around and wondering, “when it gonna be done?” And I think that’s why, as a team, we feel so fortunate that we get to be part of that transition, from abstract idea to something that is tangible.

Apple’s Secret Sauce For Design? Listening

So just what is that small design team doing, though, that makes it so successful? It’s entirely a matter of process, Ive insists, built upon multi-decade relationships of respect and trust.

In 30 years time, we’ll look back at, with such fondness, the way we worked, not necessarily what we did. I think the advantage is we have so much trust as a team that we don’t censor our ideas because we are nervous and scared that they will sound absurd . . . Very often it seems to be you listen to the biggest, loudest voice. A lot of this process is about listening, I think. What we’ve found is very often the very best ideas come from the quietest voice. And if you’re not listening, you’re going to miss that. And also when you have trust, it’s not a competition. We don’t have to deal with the bizarre game of all of the problems involved with a thrusty sort of ego. Our interest isn’t some leaf table with points. What we’re interested in as a team is, we’re genuinely, genuinely trying to figure out how we can make the very best product possible. And of course, there are many occasions where we don’t get there. But that’s our sincere hope.

Apple Will Continue To Show, Not Tell

Competitors like Google and Facebook are famous for broadcasting their future intentions–such as how they’re investing in newfangled AR/VR headsets with plenty of public experimentation. The strategy works to rally both attention and financial investment, but Ive offers a compelling case for Apple’s alternative approach–its culture of secrecy–as an expression of realism and humility that better serves the consumer.

Apple has been practicing, trying to create, develop hardware and software for decades . . . and from our experience, it’s sort of better to do the work and say, “hey, we made this,” rather than to announce to everyone, “we are going to do this.” I think that’s a cynical, opportunistic PR move. I think it’s better to just do the work. And from our experience, a lot of what we do fails. In terms of what we explore as a team. And it just seems that that’s something that we should be dealing with, not something we should be dragging everyone else through . . . So we tend to have our heads down and work. And if something is coming out well, then we’ll talk about it.

Even Ive Doesn’t Know When A Product Is Done

Is there an a-ha moment when Ive realizes that the new iPhone is perfect and complete? Nope, even he’s doing a gut check with everyone around him.