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This book is about how to read industrial markets. It is about what is happening underneath the visible flows of products, enquiries, sales visits and negotiations, and beyond the visible growth and prosperity of some companies and failure of others. For more than twenty years we have been looking over and into this field as researchers and consultants searching for answers to the many questions that the working of industrial markets raises. Unlike consumer markets, industrial markets are often not much known either to the wider public or, we are tempted to say, to many management scholars. We have been amazed by the complexity of the industrial markets and at the same time by the apparent smoothness of their working. Gradually, we have acquired respect for their importance and complexity and learnt something about how they work.

We do not think we have anything like final answers. Far from it. However, we strongly believe that we have learnt something about the forces at work in the industrial markets. In this book we have tried to condense what we have learned to one picture that we would like to share with others. The reason why we dare to share this picture with others is that we have not acquired it in isolation, but through a learning process together with many others, both practitioners and fellow researchers.