There has long been a nearly universal gap between the cutting-edge research in academic institutions and the implementation of researchers' solutions in the real world. The business world is no exception of course, but when it comes to developing greener solutions to business challenges, there is a huge demand for any information that can give companies a competitive advantage while moving toward a low-carbon economy.

The Network for Business Sustainability, based at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, has as its mission bringing the most pressing questions on sustainability to the research agenda -- and feeding the results back into practice. I recently spoke with Tom Ewart, the managing director, about the Network's history and where it's focusing its efforts now and for the future.

Matthew Wheeland: How did the network come about?

Tom Ewart: We're facing many social, environmental and economic challenges. We're leaving huge value on the table by not sharing what we know and collaborating with others to problem solve. Fundamentally, that's the issue the Network for Business Sustainability is trying to address.

The longer history goes back about five years. Tima Bansal, a professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada, was lamenting with a number of her colleagues the fact that it seemed that their research didn't have much impact on the world of practice, despite a great appetite for better understanding of sustainability. Over the next couple of months, by talking with a number of people in the sustainability world, both in research and in industry, they made a great realization.

They realized that a bridging mechanism was needed, a network that would feed the most pressing, relevant questions into the research agenda, and enable collaboration between people working on them in industry and academia. This would result in good quality, relevant knowledge that would then be fed back into research and inform actual decisions being made on the ground. About three years ago, the Network for Business Sustainability was formed, and for the last two years we've been operating fully funded.

We're funded primarily by the Canadian federal government through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a granting agency for academics. So everything we do is freely available on our website. Also, we wouldn't exist without support from the corporations on our Leadership Council, a number of federal government departments, and several universities in Canada.

MW: What is your relationship to the business community, whether through the Leadership Council or in other areas?

TE: The Leadership Council is what makes us relevant to the real world. It is comprised of about 15 organizations, each representing a different sector. Each has been identified as a leader in sustainability -- they're all organizations that have been thinking about these issues for a long time, and who've been acting on them in a substantive way for a long time. They include SAP, Unilever, Holcim, Canadian Pacific, Research In Motion, Syngenta, TD Bank, Teck, Suncor Energy, Telus, Tembec, BC Hydro, as well as government and NGO leaders.

These are the leaders to whom we turn to ensure that our research is relevant. Researchers have a lot of interesting questions on their mind, and many of those questions are relevant to the real world. But some aren't. For the researchers that are interested in exploring issues that are going to have an immediate impact, the best thing to do is to ask the people on the front line what is of most use to them: What would you most benefit from if you had more or better knowledge? What are your knowledge priorities for business sustainability?