I am amazed how little companies seem to know about competitors, and how they lack any specific plans for dealing with specific rivals – most just drag on, trying to capture small points of market share here and there from wherever and whoever they can pick it up. Such broad-spectrum ‘competing’ is expensive, takes for ever, and just doesn’t work. When it comes to responding to competitive threats McK Q finds that instead of undertaking extensive, sophisticated analyses, most companies assess just a few responses, and they often choose the most obvious one. Better practices could give them an opportunity to seize competitive advantage.