Completely rewritten for this, its second, edition, Managing Business Relationships is a précis of the three decades of research carried out by Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group, an international network of academics. 

The authors start by exploding three myths.  The first is the myth of action.  They attack the notion that marketing is something that manufacturers do and involves targeting a segmented group of faceless, passive consumers.  They argue that, in fact, business buyers actively source solutions, that they are not looking for products from manufacturers and that customers vary widely in how they behave and what they do.

The myth of action is the idea that a company can act independently.  IMP believes that companies are defined by their relationships with other companies, be they suppliers, intermediaries or customers.  You have to understand the position you occupy in this lattice before you can make sense of the world. 

The myth of completeness holds that a company can develop a strategy based on its own resources and skills.  IMP believes strategy has to involve the resources of those with whom the company interacts and on whom it depends.  It claims that core competencies these days are typically based on a network of relationships.

So what is the network?  Quite simply, it covers every company with which yours has a direct or an indirect relationship.  And, these days, terms such as "manufacturer" or "distributor" are meaningless.  If Ford buys in 70% of what it resells, is it not a distributor? Even terms like "distribution channel" and "supply chain" are erroneous, because they imply an artificial definition of upstream or downstream based on your own position.

So what comes out of all this?  The book presents a series of network paradoxes, based on the observation that, if a company is defined by its network of relationships, then the network is both a source of freedom and a cage.  Your position gives you strength, but you cannot alter it easily.  To make change you have to work with others in the network.

It also redefines technology as something that provides a solution for a customer.