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

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2:11Terms and conditions apply. 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 I think we business-minded people have an outdated or at least an incomplete idea of what quote-unquote cutting edge truly is.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 Often manufacturing gets a bad rap for being boring or outdated.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.

3:00I'm Madupa 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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5:05In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.

5:20And 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.

6:16The 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.

7:13Manufacturing 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.

8:00But 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 of toilet paper, but then it cuts deeper. Groceries, baby formula, N95 masks when it actually felt terrifying not to have one.

8:53And 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.

9:46If 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 at all. I'm seeing people everywhere stepping up. Jacob Malawa, efficient solar-powered manufacturing of HIV meds locally in East Africa.

10:42Olivia Weatherly optimizing massive spinning machines making water tanks in Indiana. Lisa transforming bottling across Latin America. Paul Boudreaux making coffee pods compostable. Cesar Bermudas making igloo coolers. Beth Espinette 3D weaving jeans. 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.

11:29First, 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.

12:15And 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, Willie 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.

13:03It'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.

13:50For 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 percent 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.

14:44That's innovation that's not going to happen. Critical infrastructure that won't be built. Edison said,

14:59These 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. us. 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 ask. 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.

15:52Thank you.

16:10shopping. 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. Hi, this is Becca Moore from For the Girls, and this podcast is sponsored by Aerie, where you can find the right bra in 59 sizes, soft fabrics, and good fits. If your bra strap is digging into your shoulder right now, it's the wrong bra. We get so used to being in pain as girls that we forget it doesn't have to be this way.

16:43Your clothes should not hurt. I got to the point where I stopped wearing bras altogether. And now my life has changed, you guys. The only bras I have in my dresser right now are Aerie, and I'm not kidding. Aerie's on a mission to make you feel good, and that starts with your bra. Your bra should hold you in, not back. Visit Aerie.com to find the right bra for you. You know that feeling. Too many updates, Too many meetings, too many things falling through the cracks. Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform designed from the ground up for people and agents to work side by side and deliver more together.

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17:37That 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.

18:16Those 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.

18:54Manufacturing 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, Farah Degrunge, Daniela Ballarezzo, Tansika Sangmanivang, and Roxanne Heilash. I'm Madupa Akinola. Thanks for listening.

19:38This 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. Hi, this is Becca Moore from For the Girls, and this podcast is sponsored by Aerie, where you can find the right bra in 59 sizes, soft fabrics, and good fits.

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