Stage-Gate has become the most widely used method for conceiving, developing, and launching new products in industry today. Stage-Gate is much more than a business process, however. The model was originally conceived by observing successful product developers as they drove bold and major innovations to market. Those early observations led to the conclusion that there was a “better way”-that some innovation teams and project leaders had intuitively figure it out. I tried to capture treir secret to success on paper, and so was born the Stage-Gate system. Thus, Stage-Gateis an idea-to launch process, but one that encompasses a body of knowledge and best practice. Those best practice embedded within today’s Stage-Gate are now based on studies of thousands of successful what the winners do differently from the rest