When Immelt explained any given strategy or projected the company’s future performance, he continued to lean on athletic ideas of conquest. His competitive instincts in business drove him to such thinking. Like a football coach intent on picking up yards on the field, he liked taking market share, and one of his favorite tropes was promising that GE was poised to “win.” Buying Alstom would drive the other teams backward as GE claimed more and more of the field.
