Identifying Potential Collaborative Innovation Networks to Support Emerging Chemical Legislation and Global Design for Sustainability

In both the established and emerging markets around the world, the need for understanding the impact of chemical composition in one's product has become a critical part of doing business. The requirements to label products, disclose full chemical content to customers and consumers, and eventually eliminate substances of concern from product portfolios are now a global reality. Historically, managing this type of chemical detail was reserved for extremely toxic substance almost never seen in many industries, or at a minimum it was only a requirement of the chemical manufacturers themselves. With the implementation of legislation such as the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) in the European Union, as well as similar laws in other countries, downstream users of chemicals in dimensional products now face the challenge of managing this data through a global supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to use social network analysis as a tool to identify potential global collaborative networks across multiple regions, products, materials, substances, and suppliers in order to find safe alternative substances to build products. The ability to identify who the key stakeholders are around a targeted substance of very high concern is a first step to finding a solution. The paper offers an example that can easily be replicated by other businesses faced with the task of finding potential collaborators with a need to find alternative substances to build safer and cleaner products.