Whether they specialize in fuel additives or flame retardants, in plastics or planes, many of today's leading manufacturers seek more environmentally friendly ways to design, develop and produce new materials. Bringing greener products to market is one important goal-airplanes that consume less fuel, plastics that use recycled materials, tires that that can be made without petroleum-based oils, for example.

But the design and development process itself can be wasteful, drive up costs and delay time-to-market. Some experiments may cause toxic or hazardous reactions, resources are drained following research dead ends, great product ideas end up requiring a costly or scarce raw material. As a result, it is equally important to look at how R&D can be practiced in a more efficient and sustainable manner.

Innovation will play a critical role in driving positive change, and smart organizations can start by leveraging some of the same research approaches that are being applied to the design and development of cutting-edge products. These include advanced chemistry, time-saving "virtual" experimentation, and more streamlined, integrated information management.

Let's examine a couple of these areas in greater detail:

Integrated Information Management

Information is an organization's most valuable resource, yet all too often it is not treated as such. The global reach of corporate enterprises today means that critical knowledge can easily get trapped in departmental, system and geographic silos-the research scientists don't end up sharing data with processing engineers, the processing engineers aren't communicating enough with procurement specialists, regulatory experts aren't brought into design planning early enough and so on.

For example, R&D scientists have not traditionally been rewarded for coming up with materials that are easy to make, they've been rewarded for discovering something new, better, or more functional than what's come before. But novel discoveries also need to translate into products that are safe, cost-effective to source and manufacture, and commercially and ecologically viable.

In a climate where time-to-market timelines are continually shrinking, the research and innovation side of the house must be more closely aligned with the development and manufacturing side. This is where an end-to-end, web services-based foundation for information sharing and collaboration comes into play. Call it "scientific business intelligence." Organizations need to be able to easily access and integrate critical data across the entire product design and development pipeline so that issues such as environmental fate and safety can be factored into the product lifecycle from day one. By connecting disparate information sources-such as data from chemical, biological and materials databases and instruments, from modeling and simulation analyses, from various organizational departments, and more-project teams can make better, faster and smarter decisions that have a direct impact on product sustainability.

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