The Cambridge Union Society announced that Jony Ive had won its Stephen Hawking Fellowship award earlier this year. As part of the accolade, Ive recently delivered a lecture at Cambridge University’s Union hall. Ive shared a variety of interesting ideas, but one in particular was the absurdity and importance of switching back and forth between a creative mindset and a problem solving perspective.
Ive’s lecture is only the second to come from the Stephen Hawking Fellowship, with the inaugural speech being given by the late professor last year.
As reported by The Independent, Ive’s lecture was “intellectually rich but still accessible, dense with ideas and fascinating.” Further, he expressed a sense of humility as he talked about the value of curiosity.
Ive shared an interesting perspective when talking about how we perceive problems related to technology.
He mentioned that early on he was concerned about being “technologically inept,” but that idea faded away when he first used a Mac.
He shared more interesting thoughts on creativity and how he thinks about “the nature of ideas” and pays attention to the “most tentative thought.”
As he has shared on several recent occasions, Ive remains energized about creating at Apple.
In one of the more fascinating moments of the lecture, Ive shared his ideas on the importance and dichotomy between curiosity and problem solving.
He believes that while using both perspectives is important, going back and forth between curiosity and resolve leans towards “the utterly absurd.”
Diving deeper on the idea, he says that he finds himself moving back and forth between these modes on a daily basis.
Jony Ive discusses the importance and absurdity between leveraging ‘curiosity’ and the focus to ‘solve problems’ ended his lecture with this quote from Steve Jobs:
Check out the full article on Jony Ive’s lecture here.
