New product development (NPD) projects tend to fail, either in the last stage of the development process or in the later commercial stage. The underlying causes of failure can often be traced to the beginning stage, in what is often called the front end of NPD. Broadly speaking, this stage is defined as the period between the initial consideration of a new product idea and the decision to begin or to abort development of the product (Kim and Wilemon 2002a). Prior research on managing NPD has shown that the front end of NPD often has a dynamic and interactive nature (Akbar and Tzokas 2013). This stage is characterized by complex information processing (Khurana and Rosenthal 1997; De Brentani and Reid 2012), ad hoc decision-making (Montoya-Weiss and O’Driscoll 2000), and conflicting organizational pressures caused by, for example, high degrees of complexity and uncertainty (Chang et al. 2007). These challenging characteristics frequently result in missteps, time delays, and product failure (Goldenberg et al. 2001). Prior research also shows that ability to manage the front end of NPD, in which robust product definitions are developed, has a significant effect on product success (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1987; Murphy and Kumar 1996; Khurana and Rosenthal 1997, 1998). Vague or faulty product definitions may result in high costs and/or failure in subsequent stages of the development process (Bacon et al. 1994). Most research on the front end of NPD concludes that this stage – from a managerial point of view – is different from later product development stages. Therefore, the front end of NPD must be managed following a different logic (Markham 2013). However, the extant front-end literature, which relies considerably on anecdotal evidence, lacks a comprehensive conceptual framework that identifies, describes, and synthesizes the key success factors in front-end management. This article, which reviews the literature on the front end of NPD, focuses on these success factors. The article then uses these factors to create a conceptual framework that firms can use to manage the front end of NPD. Although the literature on the later stages of NPD is well developed (e.g., Brown and Eisenhardt 1995; Cooper et al. 2002), we still lack a conceptual understanding of how firms that seek to enhance their front-end competence should proceed (e.g., Florén and Frishammar 2012; Chang et al. 2007; Kim and Wilemon 2002a, 2002b). Our conceptual framework is intended to provide that assistance. The article is structured as follows. We begin by describing how we conducted our literature review. Based on the results of this review, we present a discussion of success factors for the front end of NPD, including commentary on robust product definition, open innovation, and on go/no-go decision-making in NPD. We distinguish between foundational success factors and projectspecific success factors. We then present our conceptual framework that that is based on these factors. Thereafter we discuss our findings with reference to previous research and describe our practical and theoretical contributions. We conclude with suggestions for future research.