The future isn't just coded — it's built | Lauren Dunford

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This might be a hot take, but hear me out. I think we business minded people have.

An outdated or at least an incomplete.

Idea of what quote unquote cutting edge truly is. It seems to me that For a long time, we've associated it with techies. You know, the CEO in the garage and the coders and engineers with their lanyards and secret projects, like something out.

Of a spy movie.

And sure, that might be true sometimes, but there's a huge swath of the economy that we're leaving out. Manufacturing. Often manufacturing gets a bad rap for being boring or outdated. But our speaker today is here to tell us a new future is ready to be built.

I'm Medupa Akinola. This is TED Business, a podcast from ted. Lauren Dunford identifies as a factory fixer, and she's here to inspire a new generation to get excited about manufacturing. She believes our future depends on building a world that is more sustainable, more energy efficient, and less wasteful than the world we live in today. It's about imagining and making something better for ourselves. And what's more cutting edge than that? Then after the talk, I'll reflect on the joy of creation. But first, a quick break.

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And now Lauren Dunford takes the TED stage.

As we get started, I wanted to first ask everyone to set aside any thoughts on current events for the moment. And let's take five seconds to look around this big room we're all in right now to try to find even one thing that was not manufactured. Other humans don't count. Ready?

Go.

One thing that's not manufactured. Not actually that easy, is it? Manufacturing is a sixth of our global economy, one third of all greenhouse gas emissions.

About.

And for context, that's huge. That is three times all the emissions of the United States. Somehow, though, it starts to actually feel even bigger than that when you try to think of what in our daily lives isn't manufactured. The trees, the ocean, fluffy clouds, of course. But everything we humans make, which is more and more every single day, is manufactured. So how that manufacturing happens is so important. I want to share how we can all think differently about manufacturing, why the greatest opportunity of our generation is manufacturing, and why the heroes of our time with the coolest, most absolutely cutting edge careers are going to be in manufacturing. And here's the great news. 57% of Gen Z wants to go into manufacturing.

Just kidding.

57% of Gen Z wants to be social media influencers. And that's the problem. Manufacturing has an outdated reputation as 3D, dull, dirty and dangerous. So I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. Friends went into tech saying code was the future. But I was a wide eyed 23 year old on the hunt for purpose. I joined a company on a mission to bring millions of students fresh and healthy food. And I showed up my first day ready and inspired. First thing, my new boss handed me a hairnet. Let me tell you, nothing brings you down to earth faster than realizing your actual first job is not to get hair in someone's food. But then I stepped onto the production floor. Conveyors moving, machine sealing meals. And I realized I had always thought of food as cooking. But everything at scale becomes manufacturing. I spent five years there and I can never see the world the same way. Manufacturing is everything. Not just food, but cardboard boxes, pipes bringing clean water, asphalt roads, our trucks drove on. Manufacturing is everything, but we don't give it a second thought. Or in most cases even a first. We should.

Where and how we manufacture has never been as important as it is today. We got a tiny taste of it in Covid. Trapped at home. At first it was kind of a joke. Stores are sold out a toilet paper. But then it Cuts deeper groceries, baby formula N95 masks, when it actually felt terrifying not to have one. And then I realized if someone I love has to go to the hospital, they may not have gloves or masks either. Because we don't have the factories for critical things. If we can't make, we break.

Even. AI. We all talk about the cloud like it's some magic fluff in the sky. Nope. Every conversation I have with AI leaders, they're trying to figure out how the heck to build and power massive data centers stacked full of metal. Servers wrapped in steel and cement with fans and cooling towers, all using more power than this entire city. That's all made in factories. The future isn't just coded, it's built. If we can't build, we can't lead. If we can't build, we are handing the keys to our future, to those who can.

We're at a turning point. And as humans, we've actually had a moment like this before. In World War II, people rolled up their sleeves. Rosie the Riveters, powering manufacturing that saved the world. The choice we humans face today is actually even bigger than that. It's not just about which countries are going to run our planet. It's about whether we humans are going to have a planet that we can live on and at all.

I'm seeing people everywhere stepping up. Jacob Malawa. Efficient solar powered manufacturing of HIV meds locally in East Africa. Olivia Weatherly. Optimizing massive spinning machines. Making water tanks in Indiana. Lisa transforming bottling across Latin America. Paul Boudreau making coffee pods. Compostable. Cesar Bermudas. Making igloo coolers. Beth Espinette, 3D Weaving Genes, medicine, water tanks, jeans, satellites, sutures, speedboats, underwater drones, animal crackers. This can be fun, it can be entrepreneurial, it can be sexy, and it can be sustainable. From food manufacturing, I headed to Stanford for my mba and I saw incredible technology to decarbonize manufacturing. Win, win, win. Lower cost, lower emissions and a sales advantage. First it felt like we got this and I thought, I don't know if they even need me. But since then, I've spent time in more factories than I can count. Everywhere from Minneapolis to Mexico City to Mombasa And I've seen the same thing everywhere. Energy is a big cost and 99% of the world's factories don't even have the foundation yet for those awesome Stanford solutions. The light bulb went off and I started a company called Guidewheel to close that gap. At first, we got started with energy efficiency. Clipped sensors like little smartwatches on the power going into each machine and launched, excited to see those energy savings start rolling in. And nothing happened. Oh my gosh. I remember staring so sadly at those usage stats. Energy was a big cost. The team seemed to care, but they were not using it. Except for two guys, Willy and Parav, they were logging in all day, every day, like energy superfans. So we went out to their factory and their production team showed us what all the energy teams had missed, which is that the power going into their machines wasn't just power. It was the heartbeat of their machines, which was the heartbeat of their production, which was the heartbeat of their entire business. Energy was a big cost, but production was the priority. It's all about production. And production had been a nightmare to measure and track across patchworks of different ages, makes and models of equipment across the factories. But every machine uses power. And just like you don't have to tell your smartwatch if you're running or resting from that electrical heartbeat of the machine, we can know exactly how much it's producing, how fast, and predict problems before they happen. It's the first ever universal translator for any machine anywhere on the planet. Energy to production and the foundation for real time intelligence. So any factory team on earth can reach peak productivity and decarbonize. For a very simple example, if you have a big machine idling in between production runs, it's wasting energy and it's wasting production time. That's just one tiny part of why the hundreds of manufacturers using this technology are already seeing energy efficiency improve up to 45% and productivity up 1.4x. That is a huge impact. And the impact just grows with more scale. And as the power of AI improves, these are not dull, dirty and dangerous jobs anymore. These are clean, cutting edge and really dang cool careers. But unless we bring manufacturing from devalued to uplifted, millions of jobs in manufacturing are currently on track to go unfilled by 2030. That's innovation that's not going to happen. Critical infrastructure that won't be built. Edison said opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work. These awesome teams need talent, excited for hard work to join them. If they come, we can build it. Imagine if 57% of the next generation actually was excited to make real things instead of Instagram reels.

Each of us, whether we care about our countries or our climate, can help make manufacturing the biggest comeback story of our time. So here's my if you're a parent, talk about this with your kids. If you're a kid or a kid at heart, talk about it with your friends and everyone. Let's thank the makers. Because our future isn't just coded, it's built. Let's roll up our sleeves and build it. Thank you.

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This episode is brought.

To you by LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, work rarely stops. When the day ends, your business is always on. And when it's time to hire, you need a partner who's just as committed. That's where LinkedIn jobs comes in. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes hiring simple. Post your job for a fee and share it with your network. Their new feature even helps write job descriptions and gets your posting in front of the right candidates with deep insights. Want more reach? Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. Here's what matters most. Quality. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses using LinkedIn said that it's helped them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring and find your next great hire today. Post your job for free@LinkedIn.com tedbiz that's LinkedIn.com tedbiz to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

That was Lauren Dunford speaking at TED 2025. I love the genuine enthusiasm Lauren brings to her talk. She reminds me that there is so much power and beauty in actually making something tangible. Something that doesn't just exist in the abstract. So many of us have forgotten how to do that, or just assume we can't. When we think of manufacturing, we might think of automotive plants or steel factories. Those still exist, of course, but as Lauren said, manufacturing is so much broader than that that IKEA bookshelf it took you hours to put together. Manufactured your kitchen appliances, Manufactured those earbuds that deliver your favorite tunes directly to your ears. Manufactured. Our preconceptions about hard manufacturing labor also means we don't necessarily encourage the next generation to enter this industry. We tell them that the stable jobs and opportunities lie in the world of coding, consulting or finance. But it's hard to find something as important or as evergreen as working to build the physical world around us, and we need to expand our understanding of what that work entails. Lauren gives great examples of people who come up with unique products that need to be manufactured. Manufacturing is about being visionary. Manufacturing is a generative process that continues to evolve, and we must evolve with it. The act of creation is an important one, and Lauren highlights how it needs to be uplifted.

That's it for today. TED Business is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Hannah Kingsley Ma, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and fact checked by Julia Dickerson. Special thanks to Maria Ladias, Farrah de Grunge, Daniela Ballaraizo, Tansika Sangmanivong, and Roxanne Hylash. I'm Madupa Akinola. Thanks for listening.

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn.

If you're a small business owner, work rarely stops. When the day ends, your business is always on. And when it's time to hire, you need a partner who's just as committed. That's where LinkedIn jobs comes in. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes hiring simple. Post your job for a fee and share it with your network. Their new feature even helps write job descriptions and gets your posting in front of the right candidates with deep insights. Want more reach? Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. Here's what matters most. Quality. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses using LinkedIn said that it's helped them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring and find your next great hire today. Post your job for free@LinkedIn.com tedbiz that's LinkedIn.com tedbiz to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI, they already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's podcast Work Life and this episode is brought to you by. ServiceNow AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies use the ServiceNow AI platform. While other platforms duct tape tools together. ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data workflows and AI connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters Most. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people@servicenow.com.