Effective and efficient information retrieval, knowledge sharing and combining has become an essential part of more and more professional tasks and work flows in different kinds of projects. Our aim is to investigate the use of emerging Semantic Web technologies, tools, and standards in the support of effective information retrieval in real multi-disciplinary activities, such as innovative product design. This paper presents an approach to knowledge sharing and information support that has been developed and adopted, the information system architecture that is being developed to test both this approach, and the Semantic Web techniques that are used in its implementation, some early results, and a discussion of related work in information systems and Semantic Web techniques and tools.