Unlocking AI and Innovation With Sustainability

Sustainability isn’t just a goal, but a powerful force actively driving AI and innovation efforts. ♻️

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At the Six Five Summit, host Melody Brue is joined by Cisco's Mary de Wysocki, SVP and Chief Sustainability Officer, for a conversation on how sustainability is driving AI and innovation efforts at Cisco, and embedding purpose into technological advancement.

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Key takeaways include :

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🔹Sustainability as an Innovation Driver: Cisco is deeply integrating sustainability into the core of its innovation strategies, demonstrating that purpose and progress are inextricably linked.

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🔹Leveraging AI for Sustainable Initiatives: Get specific examples of how cutting-edge AI technologies are being actively leveraged to advance critical sustainability initiatives, from energy efficiency to circular economy.

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🔹Corporate Responsibility & Sustainable Tech: Understand the indispensable role of corporate responsibility in championing and delivering truly sustainable technology solutions that benefit both business and the planet.

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🔹Cisco's Roadmap for a Sustainable Future: Gain insights into Cisco's forward-thinking roadmap for sustainability, including future innovation projects that demonstrate their commitment to a greener, more responsible technological landscape.

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Learn more at Cisco.

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Watch the full video at Six Five Media, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you never miss an episode.

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Or listen to the audio here:

Melody Brue: Hi, I am Melody Brue from Moor Insights & Strategy . Welcome to this Six Five Summit AI Unleashed. Today I'm joined by Mary de Wysocki, Chief Sustainability Officer at Cisco. We're going to explore how Cisco is building digital resilience while advancing sustainability from AI infrastructure to circular business models. How are you? Thank you for joining us.

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Mary de Wysocki: You for having me here today. 

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Melody Brue: Yeah, really excited to get into this conversation. Let's dig in. Let's just start with a general overview about Cisco's sustainability strategy.

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Mary de Wysocki Well, you just mentioned digital resiliency, and I think about that coupled with our purpose to power inclusive future for all. And so when I think about what does that inclusive future look like, I think about resiliency. I think about what sustainability can do, and so that's how we built our strategy. There's three key pillars. One, how do we accelerate the transition to clean our energy? And we know our products and services can help our customers do that. Second critically moving more and more from a linear model to a more circular and the third, it's all about how we can leverage technology to create resilient ecosystems in communities.

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Melody Brue: So Cisco is leading in AI infrastructure. How does that fit into your sustainability model?

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Mary de Wysocki: Cisco's a technology company, so you're always grappling with how does technology become an enabler. I've also been with Cisco for a few decades, so I've seen how these technologies emerge. And so one of the things that you do is how do you think about the transformational impact that AI can have? And the first thing I focus in on is how do you incorporate that into the way you design your product? So take for example, Silicon One, the ability for our engineers to grapple with how do you create more bandwidth, more compute at the same time balancing that with ever increasing energy efficiency that connects right back to strategy. I think another thing that's important after you've designed it, let's say into your products, how can you give more ability for the tech leaders to kind of manage it and observe what's going on? This allows tech leader to maybe choose when they upload the latest software update or maybe shift workload model. So it's really building that intelligence in. And I think one of the key things is just connecting the dots between these technology innovations and how that ultimately creates a more sustainable impact as

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Melody Brue: Well. Yeah. So let's connect the dots between the sustainability, the growing demand for AI and how it relates to data centers.

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Mary de Wysocki: I think we all are excited about the opportunity that AI can provide, whether more efficiencies or I think of how it could really tackle some of the biggest challenges that we are facing. But I also recognize that it does require increased energy, and so I don't think you can really decouple thinking about AI without thinking about energy innovation as well. And so this again is how are you designing your products to be more energy efficient? How are you designing intentionally an AI ready data center that's going to provide that capability, but you're grappling with, is it secure? How is the energy really connected to your outcome? I think beyond that, one of the key things is really how you design it in the field. I started my technology career as a systems engineer, so I'm always really routing and rooting for those folks of going, are you designing it in the field to really be the most energy efficient?

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I've seen examples where let's say you refresh a data center, it could be half the footprint. So you think about that, the ability to manage it, but there's also really interesting innovations, whether it's liquid cooling in the data center, but I also know we're going to need new and more energy. So for example, Cisco corporate have invested in a new form of energy. It's a wave technology. So imagine a humongous buoy in the ocean and the ocean just, it keeps going up and down. So permanent energy ability to create so that all of us, as we're thinking about the future, how can we invest and signal the demand for more energy and really use that patient capital to help take it from idea out of the lab into the pilot and ultimately into scale.

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Melody Brue: So as we're thinking about AI and infrastructure, how does that impact security?

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Mary de Wysocki: I think you need to look at it in a couple different ways. The first thing, as we mentioned, you can't really decouple the opportunity of AI and the energy demand or the energy innovation that we require. So when I think about it, we know that AI ready data centers or we're going to require energy. Well, how do you get the energy there? You ultimately have to connect to your grid. Where is that? What is the ability for your grid to provide that reliable, secure energy? And I think this is again where networking is critical as we really think about all different types of energy coming together. So you've got more diverse energy, you need more flexibility, and the ability to have each endpoint secure is critical. That smart modern grid, if we're not thinking about that now, it is going to be a headwind, I think, for achieving that opportunity.

I think one of the other things that I always think about AI is at the end of the day, you think about that it's learning from or the data that's providing the insights and the inference. And so that's another area that you need to think about. How are you grappling with your responsible AI framework, the ability to think about transparency, the ability to think about the privacy aspect of it. So to me, I just don't think that we can imagine that future without really grappling with the ability to create and transmit secure variable dynamic energy.

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Melody Brue: You talked a little bit about the people aspect of this and people are going to really have to change the way they work with AI. How does the sustainability aspect of that come into play when people are starting to think about AI as their work partner?

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Mary de Wysocki: I think this is another super interesting dynamic that we're grappling with. How does AI redefine the way we work and reshape leadership? I think we talk a lot about AI creating efficiency. I can talk about it in let's say the network and the data center, but think about how it's going to change the way we work and the efficiencies. So I do think this is going to allow us to rethink what your job is and what that looks like and how are you using AI to automate, for example, I'm using it right now in terms of how I can leverage it for my own research and benchmarking, giving me that first draft. I do think you're going to also see it. Imagine that day where I have that digital twin. We talk about a digital twin in a data center all the time. But imagine you've got a digital twin that has your experiences the way you think. Hopefully for me, my sarcastic sense of humor, but in a way that translate across. I mean, one of the things that we grapple with in work is we're a global company. I bet you also have clients around the world, but do we have a digital twin or that AI assistant or coach that can allow me to attend a meeting that is at 1:00 AM in the morning and being able to provide my input and then update me the next day? I think it's also going to be an area where this AI coach is going to be providing me with ways that I can be a better leader. I'll have to share with you that I'm dyslexic, so I often use very little words and very basic words when I write, because sometimes what I think I'm typing may not be what shows up. 

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So the ability to have an AI coach that allows me to take what I intend and potentially make it more detailed or more inspiring or making sure that the tone is appropriate, I think is going to really help me in the future. But then as a sustainability leader, you always want to balance that use case. And what is the real benefit to productivity, to efficiencies and effectiveness? How does it help you create more wellbeing in your workforce? And at the same time grapple with the fact that it is going to require more power. And this is where the ability for us to design the products with energy efficiency, the ability to provide that ability to manage, to observe, to give choices in terms of where and how we leverage shifting of workloads or uploading of information is going to be critical. And then at the end of the day, this is another area where I think AI is going to help is how I understand what really is the carbon footprint of our product, our software, and our use cases. That again, gives me as a sustainability or more information to work with our technology leaders about the choices they make. 

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Melody Brue: So you’re not just talking about sustainable for the environment, you're actually talking about sustainability for humans at that point as well.

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Mary de Wysocki: Exactly. And that's why I always kind of anchor in resilience because I do think that we are living in an ever-changing world from the technology aspects as well as just our own family dynamics. And the ability to design in that resiliency to the individual, to your company, to your community is critical for the future. And technology, I think is going to be a huge enabler of it. And so how do you think

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Melody Brue: That changes the conversation around sustainability, how people are looking at initiatives of sustainability?

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Mary de Wysocki: I think it actually is ever increasingly connecting it to the business outcomes that we all are looking for. Yes, I think maybe we've thought sometimes of two value profiles of look at what value we're creating over here for sustainability or the planet and look at the value we're creating for ourselves, our customers, our partners. But quite frankly, you're really seeing the interdependency of it. So I do think I'm seeing more and more of the ability for me to articulate the business outcome, but then sometimes translate it for that chief sustainability officer or the financial team or going back and taking how I think about sustainability or carbon or circularity and translating that for our technology leader as well. So I'm a bit of a translator as well.

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Melody Brue: Yeah, it kind of makes the conversation easier to have in a way. It's not one or the other. They work together now. So you talked a little bit about circularity. So can you talk in practical terms about what that means and how that fits into your sustainability? Absolutely.

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Mary de Wysocki: Now, I grew up in a world that was very linear. You would make something, you would use it and you would throw it out. And as you think about that business model, you realize that you're actually leaving a lot of value on the table because you could have had take that one product and maybe have multiple life cycles of it. You also could recycle or use the material differently. So circular is really about how you are designing for multiple life cycles, how you're reducing or designing out waste, how you're designing your product to be more modular, more easily assembled, disassembled. How are you thinking about the end of life? And that ties right back to your materials. Are you using a particular material that's more regenerative, let's say fiber packaging in your product? Or is it more using more recycled material as you develop as, for example, our iPhones? Or a great example of using, I think over 70% of post-consumer recycled material plate there in the product?

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Melody Brue: Yeah. Some of the devices that I've seen on the Cisco side, they're designing completely around sustainability. I mean, they said some of the device people that I spoke to and also said that even they thought that it was impossible to do what they were trying to do.

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Mary de Wysocki: I'll tell you one of the things that I don't think everyone realized is how much by introducing, let's say energy efficiency requirements or more circular creates more innovation and inspiration in our engineering or our supply chain team. I was so pleased to be able to sit down with some of our tremendous hardware engineers as they showed our latest Cisco 93 50, and they pulled it apart and they're like, look, we just shifted how this fan was moving air within this device, or we removed this piece of plastic and look what we did. So what it ends up doing in my mind, is actually creating more disruptive innovation because you're adding in a new component to how the engineers are thinking about delivering that next version of the product. But I also think it is, and this is maybe where purpose comes into a certain extent, to see the pride and the inspiration and the problem solving that we're asking them to do. It really to me is one of those value drivers that I don't know that we always think about is this is critical to innovation and thinking about how our products will be not only more resilient, more sustainable in the future.

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Melody Brue: So with all of that in mind, how can companies integrate sustainability into their core operations rather than treating it as an add-on? As you said, these are things that affect the design, the observability. I mean, everything about the product is different when it's not an add-on, it's built in.

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Mary de Wysocki: I think I would suggest you start with answering the question of how can sustainability be a value creator for you and your customers? And just like you mentioned, I think the resilient future really requires us to embed sustainability and not as an add-on, but really that driver of value, of innovation, of trust. It's really how do you weave it into how you design your products, your services, how do you think about it as a risk mitigator, as part of your procurement strategies, really how you serve your customers and your partners. To me, you do that. You then create more scalability of that business model, the way of thinking, but ultimately you're just turning your strategy into real impact.

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Melody Brue: That's great. Well, thank you so much. This was really insightful, and thank you for joining us for this Six Five Summit. And if you'd like to learn more, please visit cisco.com or follow Cisco on X and stay with us. There's more ahead at the Six Five Summit.

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Disclaimer: The Six Five Summit is for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors, and we ask that you do not treat us as such.

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