This blog is part of our focus on Cisco employees who are “Striving for Sustainability” by finding opportunities to integrate sustainability in their day-to-day work.
At Cisco, we have been focusing on evolving from a linear economy that extracts resources and eventually wastes them, to a circular one that finds new uses for products and their inputs. By understanding the environmental impacts of our products, we can make informed decisions to reduce the resources used and determine how to extend the life of our products.
That brings us to Sripriya Narayanan, a senior product manager based in India who works for Cisco’s Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) business unit, which focuses on industrial routers, switches, and access points. She has collaborated with Cisco’s Circular Design team to develop a series of industrial routers with Circular Design Principles at the core. I recently sat down with her to learn more about her story:
When did your interest in sustainability begin?
Sripriya: My journey towards sustainability began in my childhood in India, surrounded by my parents and grandparents, who lived what we now call a sustainable lifestyle. Their approach was simple: buying only what was necessary, avoiding plastic, minimizing waste, and embracing a holistic, minimalist lifestyle. This simplicity deeply influenced me. Another influence is my love for nature and spending time in natural settings. Being in nature taught me the importance of preserving its tranquility and beauty for future generations.
When I moved to the United States after starting my career at Cisco, I began volunteering with an environmental nonprofit in San Jose called Our City Forest. There, I trained as an arborist and earned a certification in tree planting. On weekends, I led community groups, including children and parents, in tree planting activities across Santa Clara County. This experience sparked my passion for environmental advocacy.
Can you tell us about your professional and educational journey so far?
Sripriya: My journey began as a software engineer at Cisco, where I progressed to a lead engineer and technical leader. While I enjoyed my work, I realized that to drive change, I needed to transition to the business side where decisions impacting sustainability were made. To facilitate this, I pursued an MBA. I chose Berkeley’s Haas School of Business due to its focus on sustainability and the active Net Impact Club. This club allowed me to engage with industry influencers and educate my peers, many of whom were CEOs or VPs attending evening and weekend classes. Collaborating with these key industry figures was enriching, as it enabled us to collectively promote sustainable practices.
During my second year at Berkeley, I transitioned into product management at Cisco, a natural progression aligning with my goals. I joined the industrial IoT business unit as a product manager, leading the industrial routing portfolio. This role involves end-to-end management, from defining the product to launching it and engaging with customers as well as managing its end-of-life. The industrial IoT business unit was crucial to me, as it allowed direct interaction with industry leaders in sectors like utilities, manufacturing, oil and gas, and transportation. The convergence of IT and OT is a focus for industries and critical infrastructure providers. Cisco leverages its direct interactions with business leaders to explore how it can enable best practices, including sustainability, across networks from enterprise to industry spaces, all while maintaining trust and addressing both internal product challenges and external factors. It was a chance to influence sustainability on a larger scale, fulfilling my ambition to integrate circularity practices into the business realm.
How are you incorporating circularity in your role as a product manager?
Sripriya: Embracing modular design has become imperative, especially in our industrial IoT business unit, where customers expect long-lasting products, unlike the enterprise sector with frequent refresh cycles. Modularizing components allows for standardization across business units, offering flexibility and reducing redesign costs. This approach also aligns with sustainability goals by minimizing waste and resource usage.
While developing our next-generation products, I prioritized Circular Design Principles. Inspired by sustainability advocates and my own passion, I collaborated cross-functionally to integrate modular components and improve energy efficiency for utility clients concerned with energy consumption.
I also initiated more packaging sustainability efforts, eliminating excessive foam and adopting materials with a lower environmental impact from manufacturing or end of life. This was achieved through collaboration with Cisco’s packaging sustainability team. At this point of my career, I was promoted to a senior product manager position and was chosen as a leader to drive sustainability initiatives for our entire Industrial IoT business unit.
Looking to the future, I will continue to drive sustainability initiatives for Cisco Industrial IoT in partnership with the Chief Sustainability Office (CSO) and Engineering Sustainability Office (ESO) teams.
What benefits have you observed from implementing Circular Design Principles?
Sripriya: Implementing Circular Design Principles offers numerous advantages, particularly in extending product lifetimes. Traditionally, businesses focused on frequent product refreshes to achieve their goals. However, by adopting a circular design mindset allows us to foster innovation without the necessity to launch new products every few years. This shift in perspective is not only beneficial for our company but also resonates across various industries, including the enterprise B2B sector.
Circular design can support faster innovation by building on existing products rather than starting from scratch. This approach reduces operational costs and capital expenses, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, by minimizing the use of natural resources. Furthermore, designing products in a modular way facilitates take-back and reuse, which can reduce financial pressures on both our customers and our supply chain management.
From an environmental standpoint, circular design reduces waste and improve energy efficiency. During product use, energy efficiency is crucial. Our collaboration with the CSO team on a comprehensive product life cycle analysis highlighted that the majority of GHG emissions occur during the use phase. Therefore, integrating energy-efficient features in product design is essential for reducing emissions.
How are Cisco’s Industrial IoT innovations helping customers transition to more circular models?
Sripriya: It’s essential to address our customers’ current business challenges while providing them with easy ways to leverage new innovations without completely replacing their existing products. Cisco’s Industrial IoT solutions underscore energy efficiency and support circular practices, enhancing sustainability in product management.
With a circular design approach, we enable our customers to save the expense of buying completely new equipment every time their requirements change, which also eliminates the resources and energy required to create new equipment across manufacturing, shipping, and logistics. By upgrading or repairing just the individual modules, customers extend the product’s lifetime, reduce materials that are disposed of prematurely, and help conserve resources.
Customer stories that showcase how Cisco IoT solutions have helped them with their goals can be found here.
Do you do anything in your personal life to promote circularity? If so, what advice would you give others?
Sripriya: In my personal life, I strive to promote circularity by adopting a minimalist lifestyle. This journey began during my time in the United States, where I focused on purchasing only essential items and using reusable bags for grocery shopping to avoid plastic waste. Choosing an electric or hybrid car over a traditional gas-powered vehicle was another significant step that I took, as well as taking public transportation.
Recently, I relocated to India to be closer to my family and care for my aging parents. Here, I’ve noticed significant challenges regarding waste management and environmental awareness. While there is growing awareness about plastic pollution in some countries, in India, this understanding is often limited to certain urban areas.
Despite these challenges, I aim to influence my community by advocating for simple lifestyle changes that reduce consumption and promote responsible living. Encouraging people to consider the necessity of their purchases and seek better, more sustainable options is key. It’s about making conscious choices and recognizing that there are always alternatives that are better for the environment.
I also believe in leading by example and sharing knowledge with others to inspire them to become environmental advocates. By fostering discussions about sustainability, I hope to contribute to a more responsible and environmentally conscious world. These small actions in my daily life reflect my commitment to promoting circularity and encouraging others to do the same.
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