Beyond the dictionary

For a long time the word business meant one universal thing to me. If I heard the word business in a conversation, I imagined that we were all talking about the same thing. In reality, the word can mean many different things. Let me give you some examples of what I mean.

1. CostPlus Drugs wins in business because they sell medicine at a cheaper rate than everyone else. That's it. Their medicine isn't better, and they didn't invent them either.
2. OpenAI's ChatGPT wins in business because it was a novel thing that didn't exist before. They created a brand new useful tool.
3. Local car dealerships win in business because people want to drive the car before they buy it. In other words, the best car dealerships are the ones closest to where you live.

If I were talking about an OpenAI kind of business and you had a CostPlus Drugs kind of business in mind, we could be perceiving the conversation in very different ways. This also applies to writing, Twitter, and probably a ton of other things.

There are definitions beyond the dictionary, and communication is hard; get specific where it counts.