Sustainability challenges within the mineral resources sector are inherently complex and marked by significant uncertainty. Efforts to address these are commonly constrained by social, cultural, technical, and geo-political demands. Effectively responding to such challenges requires innovative approaches to knowledge production and decision making. Transdisciplinary science considers the inter-linkages between the technical and social components that affect and are affected by a complex issue. Transdisciplinary Collective Intelligence methods are recognized as appropriate frameworks for addressing real-world sustainability issues while advancing the transformative aims of sustainability. Our transdisciplinary approach begins with identifying the stakeholders of the mineral resources industry and community demands. Through analysis of interviews with local communities around select mining areas and field experts, a Structural Self-Interactional Matrix (SSIM) was created to analyze the key factors controlling the sector. The industry components analyzed include geological, mining, metallurgical, social, environmental, corporate and governance factors. Through MICMAC analysis the extent of interdependency and linkage between key factors was calculated and diagrammatically demonstrated. Although geology and associated controls are the primary source factors of the industry, we found that additional elements such as ethical demands and leadership are also important controlling factors. This approach bridges the language barrier between science and engineering perspectives and seeks to identify the drivers of the sector.