This paper presents the results of an empirical study on the relationship between the type of new product idea sources and the rate of success of new product development and commercialization in Korean industries. The sample was taken from various Korean industries including telecommunication, electronics, chemical, machinery, textile, etc. and composed of 45 failure and 73 success cases. The findings are not much different from those of previous studies done in the developed countries, but show some typical characteristics of new product development activities and the idea sources, information acquisition methods, type of information , incentives for idea generation, etc. of the firms in developing country like Korea. Especially the survival rate curve and the accumulative investment curve from the idea generation to commercialization phase show a little different behavior from the previous study, which also reflect the manpower, duration of each phase of the new product development process in the Korean firms.