> Growing flowers is a long-term activity involving many other separate activities.
zackly - that's what I meant by my suggestion that the context often implies a meta-business model. In other words, you might very well undertake an advertising campaign in order to increase your sales, but that would only be a tactical weapon used in your strategic campaign to grow your business, by multifarious means and over possibly a long period. After all, I have quite a few successful business clients who have no intention of growing their business - their strategies tend to other ends.
Apart from consideration of euphony, of course the reason this so irritates some listeners is surely the other common one: language is the badge of office for a disliked club. In other words, some people dislike the social context of the speakers rather than the language itself... see inel's gentle jab about MBA types as a subtle example! :)
