Book excerpt: Designed to provide a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to organic process research and development in the pharmaceutical, fine chemical, and agricultural chemical industries, this book describes the steps taken, following synthesis and evaluation, to bring key compounds to market in a cost-effective manner. It describes hands-on, step-by-step, approaches to solving process development problems, including route, reagent, and solvent selection; optimising catalytic reactions; chiral syntheses; and "green chemistry." Second Edition highlights:• Reflects the current thinking in chemical process R&D for small molecules• Retains similar structure and orientation to the first edition. • Contains approx. 85% new material• Primarily new examples (work-up and prospective considerations for pilot plant and manufacturing scale-up)• Some new/expanded topics (e.g. green chemistry, genotoxins, enzymatic processes)• Replaces the first edition, although the first edition contains useful older examples that readers may refer to - Provides insights into generating rugged, practical, cost-effective processes for the chemical preparation of "small molecules" - Breaks down process optimization into route, reagent and solvent selection, development of reaction conditions, workup, crystallizations and more - Presents guidelines for implementing and troubleshooting processes