Abstract
This paper introduces the theme of this Special Issue, that brings together some of the most significant papers presented at the 2006 Industrial Marketing & Purchasing (IMP) Group Conference. By proposing “opening the network” as the conference theme, our ambition was to provide a forum for new perspectives, alternative research methods and new empirical contexts, and so help IMP scholarship to continue evolving. After some preliminary remarks, we briefly introduce the papers and their contribution to the theme of this Special ssue. A first group of studies stimulates reflection in the field by contrasting IMP scholarship with ideas and points of view developed in related fields of inquiry.The second group, on the other hand, may be seen as an endogenous development of IMP scholarship, while the third group represents a response to a critique often addressed at the markets-as-networks approach: its dearth of managerial relevance.