Abstract During the last decade significant progress has been made in the control of non-linear systems. Some of the most promising controller design techniques are based on exact linearization theory. In this paper, exact linearization strategies for process control are critically evaluated. It is shown that many design techniques recently developed for non-linear process control are based, either implicitly or explicitly, on exact linearization of the input-output map. Extensions of basic techniques that are especially pertinent for process control problems are reviewed and evaluated. A thorough survey of applications to process control problems is included. Finally, an input-output linearizing controller is designed for a different process control problem, pH neutralization, and simulation results are presented. This example demonstrates that input-output linearization can be extended to the class of problems where the output equation is an implicit rather than explicit function of the state variables.