Purpose – Given the dramatic changes in the business environment, the purpose of the paper is to stimulate readers to challenge their mental models of business and industrial marketing, and consider the implications of the blurring of the lines between industrial and consumer marketing. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a reflection on the evolution of the discipline of industrial marketing since the author's first publication in this area 40 years ago, and an analysis of the impact on this discipline of five interrelated forces of change including: the convergence of B2B and B2C driven by the advances in the internet and rise of small businesses; the prevalence of outsourcing and creation of value networks across firms and countries; the opening of corporate R&D, manufacturing and marketing to the involvement of empowered customers; bridging the functional silos within the firm; and the movement from an "industrial" to a "knowledge" based society and the blurring of products, services, and customer experience. Findings – The lines between consumer and business marketing are increasingly blurred by new technologies and business models. Researchers and practitioners need to re-examine their mental models of business and industrial marketing in light of these changes. Research limitations/implications – The blurring of the lines has many implications, including moving from focusing on buyers to stakeholders, recognizing new forms of relationships with empowered consumers, re-examining the role of outsourcing, bridging disciplinary silos, recognizing the importance of brand equity, utilizing information and communications technology, focusing on the total customer experience, addressing emerging markets, re-examining the role of marketing research and modeling, and rethinking the use of dashboards. By recognizing these changes, one can build upon the foundation of the field to develop innovative approaches to both business and consumer markets. Originality/value – A call to debate the need to redefine and rethink the discipline, and even rethink the title and focus of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing. Paper type Viewpoint When I began my work on organizational buying behavior in the mid-1960s, the primary focus of marketing research was consumer marketing. A few pioneering studies had been completed in business and industrial marketing, including the work of. In my own work on organizational buying, I focused on the buying center and the buying process. We examined how the buying situation dictates the process and the people involved (Robinson et al., 1967; Webster and Wind, 1972) and explored the interrelationships between buying organizations and selling organizations (Nicosia and Wind, 1977). We recognized that organizations are heterogeneous and so we need to segment them, but that segmentation must go beyond simple demographics to look at the deeper relationships between buying and selling organizations (Wind and Silver, 1973; Wind and Cardozo, 1974; Wind, 1979). We recognized the richness of available data within the buying organization and its applicability to rigorous quantitative analysis, leading, for example, to measures of industrial source loyalty (Wind, 1970). Even then, we recognized that the core principles of marketing from the consumer side could be modified and applied to business-to-business interactions for goods and services as well as the sale of raw materials to "industrial" buyers. On the other hand, we also saw that, with slight variations, some of the insights developed in industrial marketing were relevant to consumer markets. One of the early insights, for example, was the recognition that buying is a complex decision process and that there was a need to look at "buying centers". In the household, it is not uncommon for purchase decisions to involve the husband, wife and even children as well as other influencers. Both organizational buying centers and buying processes vary by the buying situation ("new task", "modified rebuy" and "straight rebuy"), a finding that been robust across diverse industries. Not surprisingly, a similar conceptualization was developed independently by Howard and Sheth (1969) for consumer markets. The buying criteria of organizational buyers and consumers are multidimensional and involve relational and emotional characteristics, not only a consideration of feature functionality delivery and price. Research methods such as conjoint analysis can be applied with equal effectiveness in both markets. (see, for example, Green and Wind, 1974). While there were some obvious parallels between consumer and industrial marketing, in the early development of these fields, it did make sense for the two to advance independently. This allowed researchers and practitioners to develop in-depth understanding of the context and content of and approaches to the different markets. We have been so successful, however, that we have created our own silos.