I'm not contradicting your data. Just wanted to note that it's not a priori obvious that the iterated PD (which is a very simple problem specification) is a good approximation to real life competitive companies. Or at least that companies' problems factorize in a way that gives the PD as a factor.
We're used to human-human relation management (which the OP says is well modeled by PD), and so human CEOs apply that in their relationships with other human CEOs.
What do you think? Is the explanation as simple as you imply: that company success has such a strong factor of human-human relationships with people representing/heading other companies, that good management there (Tit for Tat) can swamp other management considerations that have no exact human relations analog (creating a good product, differentiation, pricing, investments, supply chain issues, etc).
Well, normally if you are dealing with a company as a partner, it's a company for which the partnerships are a huge factor - e.g. in my case re-distributors.
The iterated prisoner's dilemma is an oversimplified problem. In the real world, usually, the non-cooperative players are known for their non-cooperative behaviours try channels other than getting screwed over yourself.
Furthermore, there are disparity of force cases where everyone's defecting against other party, just because other side can not retaliate. E.g. you could of paid me $0.5 per day to do t...
Check it out here.
Brief summary: Dawkins demonstrates a classic "Prisoner Dilemma AI tournament". No big surprise to us today, but at the time the revelation that Tit for Tat is one of -- if not *the* -- most effective strateg(y|ies) was a surprising result. He goes on to demonstrate animals employing the Tit for Tat strategy. Assumptions of generosity, with vengefulness, appear to be strongly selected for.