User bernd.schwieren asks:

Gary, in a political competition, how would you define ground and climate?

The ground is where you fight and what you fight for. It is the source of all resources. In an election, this means that it the support of the electorate (financial and otherwise) and, in the end, their votes. As Sun Tzu said, the ground can be divided in an infinite number of ways and Sun Tzu's strategy is probably 80% about ways of finding leverage on the ground.

In this article about big-pharm from The Atlantic (via Instapundit), we have a great explanation of how large organizations are handicapped in pursuing new opportunities (S-RULE 3.4).