Jony Ive, the former head of design at Apple, addressed the graduating class of 2021 at the California College of the Arts in a beautifully moving speech.
A careful reader of my blogs will notice that he talked -in code- about upstream and downstream innovation I covered in The Evolution of Evolution in the context of his realm of expertise as ideas (upstream) and creativity (downstream). In summary, Jony expresses his hope for students not to lose their minds in the endless downstream sub-optimization without reevaluating and understanding the quest for upstream.
Enjoy Jony in his own words, pertinent even when you are not a designer:
Why do I like most of the people who left bean-counter Tim Cook’s unimaginative product ship? Because product, not finance, develops the renewable value of any company and thus shareholder value beyond the short-term masturbation of Wall Street traders.
