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Manufacturing is complicated and costly and may be seen as a necessary inconvenience, rather than a potential strategic advantage..The locus of power and decision-making in companies.

Operational engineering and manufacturing drive the majority of investment plans and proposals.Their expertise, understanding and comfort lie with the plants and systems they work with every day.This creates a natural inertia away from any transformation of technology or approach.. Capital governance processes skew decision-making and inhibit the new..

Significant investment approvals come to senior executives who rightly ask many difficult questions, while they may mistakenly expect and demand certainty.The demands and difficulties in getting through these governance processes drive both a false optimism in justifying product demand and drive the scale of the investment; “this is our one chance, so go with what we know and go big!”.

The resources needed for change (above the day-to-day).

Changing platform technology could place additional demands on operations above and beyond those of securing ongoing supply and product transfer..For I could sense, even at a young age, that the people doing the work felt no connection to any purpose or larger endeavour..

I could have put this down to the construction industry, a much-maligned industry, however as I began my career through the food and pharmaceutical industries I began to realise that much of business and society is hampered by the same reductive thinking which comes with an amnesia of purpose and a huge loss of value.The approaches and attitudes of the last century, which we were all part of, have led us to a point of crisis.. As I studied and researched systems thinking, and psychological understanding and analysed great stories of achievement I found evidence of how shared purpose and joined-up, holistic approaches yield better, maybe exquisite, outcomes on every level; individual, team, company, society, eco-system and planet.. At this point in human history I will argue that we have all the technology or technological development capability we need to solve our problems, what we lack is a scale of vision and connected approaches.

Not the reductive visions of companies and governments, but expansive visions and shared purpose that look to deliver value to all society and the planet synchronously.. And not the approaches written in our procedures, workflows and bodies of knowledge; approaches which align to expansive visions and work with the complexities we live in.. As we continue to build and develop the world we inhabit I will argue in this lecture that there is a way to find both treasure and redemption.. Join Professor John Dyson for his inaugural lecture 'In Search of Treasure and Redemption' at the University of Birmingham on 22nd November at 5:30pm in 124 - School of Chemical Engineering (Y11)..Secure your place by filling out the mandatory.