But we agree about life. We don't agree about competition, and that's why we have trouble making sense of Microsoft. And it's not the one Microsoft uses. Or at least not the only one. It's a combative one.
Competitive companies operate on the conceptual metaphor business is sports .
Or arenas . Combative companies conceive business in much more primitive terms. Their conceptual metaphors are business is war and markets are battlefields . Combative companies mean them literally. In war, all is fair.