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

TED Business

TED

Business, Modupe Akinola, Ted Business Podcast, Business Leadership Podcast, Ted Talks Business, Ted Modupe, Ted Talks

4 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Look around — almost everything you see was manufactured, from baby formula to AI data centers and beyond. Yet we rarely think about how it’s all made. Factory fixer Lauren Dunford pulls back the curtain on modern manufacturing, revealing just how thrilling and world-shaping this unsung engine of progress can be. Discover how reinventing this overlooked industry could be one of the most important opportunities of our time — and why we all have a role to play. After the talk, Modupe urges you to reevaluate your biases on manufacturing jobs and why it's an industry worth exploring by new generations.

For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.

Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:

TEDNext: ted.com/futureyou

TEDSports: ted.com/sports

TEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-vienna

TEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Adam Grant from Worklife, a podcast from TED.
0:05.3	This episode is brought to you by FreshWorks.
0:08.0	FreshWorks believes the complexity is the enemy of efficiency.
0:11.2	So stop wrestling with bloated expensive service software that takes forever to implement an update,
0:16.4	where ROI is someday, not today.
0:19.1	You've been overcharged and underserved for way too long.
0:22.7	Uncomplicate with fresh service for IT and fresh desk for customer support.
0:27.9	And with FreshWorks AI-assisted service software, you'll work smarter, not harder.
0:33.0	FreshWorks uncomplicates.
0:35.2	Learn more at freshworks.com.
0:41.0	This Works uncomplicates. Learn more at freshworks.com. This might be a hot take, but hear me out. I think we business-minded people have an outdated,
0:47.8	or at least an incomplete idea of what, quote-unquote, cutting edge truly is.
0:53.9	It seems to me that for a long time, we've associated it with techies.
0:58.7	You know, the CEO in the garage, and the coders and engineers with their lanyards and
1:04.3	secret projects like something out of a spy movie.
1:07.4	And sure, that might be true sometimes, but there's a huge swath of the economy that
1:12.6	we're leaving out. Manufacturing. Often manufacturing gets a bad rap for being boring or outdated,
1:20.7	but our speaker today is here to tell us a new future is ready to be built.
1:29.2	I'm Madupa Akinola.
1:32.3	This is Ted Business, a podcast from TED.
1:39.0	Lauren Dunford identifies as a factory fixer, and she's here to inspire a new generation to get excited about manufacturing.
1:42.3	She believes our future depends on building a world that is more sustainable, more energy
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 9 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.