Jony Ive Talks Rumors & Offers Insight on How Apple Operates in a New Interview Somethings are so secret that even he doesn’t know when a product is done.

Jony Ive is in charge of Apple‘s design lab and the notoriously private chief design officer gave an interview last week that offers insight into how the multinational technology company operates. Fast Company alum Rick Tetzeli conducts the interview, where Ive touches on a range of subjects that can be heard in full in the widget below. Highlighted topics include Ive keeping his team small despite how massive Apple has become, which he attests is how this approach makes the company’s product-building successful.

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. . . .

Ive also offered a persuasive case for Apple’s approach to secrecy in what it’s producing as an interpretation of realism and humility that better serves the consumer. A fascinating bit also includes that Ive doesn’t even know when a product is done, stating: “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.” Check the entire interview below and share your thoughts in the comments below.