AbstractNew product successd is largely determined by the way a firm conceives, develops and commercializes a new product—the new product process. Traditionally, the new product process is portrayed as proceeding in an orderly, stepwise fashion from product idea to launch. This article reports the results of a research study whose purpose was to uncover what actually occurs during the new product process. Fifty‐eight case histories were obtained from industrial product firms, and their process flow charts analyzed using a novel comparison method. No two projects were found to follow the identical process, and seven distinct types of processes were identified. Several of the processes were found to yield generally inferior results. The “best’ process, in terms of success versus failure and overall program performance, featured a balance between marketing oriented and technically oriented activities, and was characterized by a large number of varied steps in the