Continuous manufacturing can greatly reduce the quantity of intermediates that have to be generated, purified, stored, and transported between manufacturing sites. In flow, we can generate highly unstable or reactive intermediates in a controlled manner and then immediately consume the products in a multistep process. To enable the transformation from batch to continuous, it is necessary to have an understanding of the specific advantages of reactions performed in flow (i.e. better heat- and mass-transfer, improved safety for hazardous intermediates), and to develop a general toolbox of setups and methods for chemistry in flow.  As part of the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, we are working to develop both specific processes that will be used in future discovery and development of pharmaceutical drugs.