Could be discribed as the share a company enjoys from a marginal increase in the competitive market share.

You can measure reliance - departmentaly through the SAQ

( look up Brian Sexton PhD )

Yes, I do agree with Chaimaa Adly, SWOT is a good framework that you can use to evaluate competitive responsiveness; the following link might be useful:

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/content_images/fig/0510150802003.png

In alternative (or, better, in addition) you could use the Porter's 5 forces model for your strategic thinking about competitive responsiveness; please look the following link :

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4098/4745487755_664668de2d_z.jpg

Obviously, every strategic framework is only a tool and (in order to be effective) needs to be applied by someone who has experience and knowlwdge about the company, the competitive landscape, the market conditions and so on. A strategic framework is like an Excel spreadsheet; now, Excel is probably the best spreadsheet software, but you can obtain useful results (to support you problem solving exercise) only if you know what are the figures you put in the cells; the same happens with a strategic framework.

Wow, a very interesting topic...

My first thought would be that a competitive/market intelligence system has to be in place; monitor of competitive/market activites, analysis, plan of response, execution, and continuous monitoring. CIS/MIS is but a part of Strategic Management System. It is a very evolved way of management, few would know its true nature let alone execute it.

I suppose you can measure 1) speed, 2) scope, 3)scale (resources deployed, change of strategic direction), and 4) impact of competitive response.

Caution: One should know what is "Strategy" before embarking on competive strategy and strategic management....

I meant resiliance - not reliance

Thank you for your useful comments, for me it's not a question of using SWOT analysis or the other ways, i have found many staistical models, but they're complicated and require many information, often it's hard to find them, (see for example this article: http://www.fachverlag.de/sbr/pdfarchive/einzelne_pdf/sbr_2008_oct_322-358.pdf ) , and as i see, it's not very useful to use SWOT to mesure the real capacity of response, SWOT analyse the organization itself but the response related to other side "the market" and "other organisations" i mean its useful if organization really knows itself, and its comptitive situation, i mean the organizational capacities"or we can say "the organizational response capacity" and the question is how the organization can really knows itself, and compared with what? and by using any indicators? and to mesure the flexibility(adaptation) capacity and or the speed and what about "just in time response" in the hypercompetitive markets ...thank you again.

I agree with Riad in that SWOT and Porter's tools simply provide framework for assessment but for measuring competitive response . I don't know a simple way yet but by reading and analyzing the article I may be able to have such. Good question it was Riad

May be Sensitivity Analysis can be used for this

I agree with Collins that sensitivity analysis is a simpler way of measuring the strategic responsiveness of a firm to changes in the environment although SWOT may give a greater picture of the firm's capability to respond to various changes in the ecology of the organization.

Dear Riad:

Just for me to better understand: are you looking for the simplest way to measure the actual competitive response or are you looking for the simplest way to measure the competitive response capability?

Welington Rocha

Gresov et al. (1993) discusses the measurement of competitive response through its opposite, organizational inertia.

http://orgsci.journal.informs.org/content/4/2/181.abstract

Dear colleagues, in my experience as the controller in a Brazilian company, full professor of controllership at the University of Sao Paulo, and former president of the Brazilian Institute of Management Accountants I would dare to say that the quick and objective measure of competitive response for a company in today´s globally competitive market is the its market share

Dear Colleagues,

I suggest having a look to Competitive Intelligence. It is a process for gathering and analyzing information from the external environment (ex. competitive landscape). I published a book about how to anticipate it by applying a stakeholder analysis based model. You can access free from: http://www.miniera.es/libros

Best regards,

Alessandro Comai

It all largly depends on two factors : the measure of concentration in the industry and the SCA of the respective competitors. High concentration connotes strong multi strategy response. A specific SCA connotes a resort to this strength in combating "warriors".

Prof dr m s s el namaki, Victoria University, Switzerland

Benchmarking

From a different perspective I guess, response is not the right way to see it. Anticipate is much more better, you can read about co-development and cocreation, but as I m working on codevelopment and cocreation I m little bit biaised !

I think that competitive responsiveness is one in a handful of issues in Management that can't be measured directly; even less, if wanted to be measured with a fair degree of precision. Competitive responsiveness may be considered a function of organizational competitiveness. How do you measure your company’s competitiveness? By monitoring results. Monitoring results in a wider range and more often than you would normally do, if limited to sheer economic or financial results. A good, strategic BI mainframe would do, but there are some “weak signals” that only humans can perceive.

I thing that thourough and reliable Porter´s analysis of five competitive forces can offer powerful tool for the measurement of Competitive Response.

Hi, your post is a bit confusing. On the one hand you ask about how to measure 'competitive response', and on the other hand, you define 'competitive responsiveness'. However my answer addresses the question on the measure of competitive response alone, from a competitive dynamics perspective. Competitive response is a type of competitive action carried out by a firm in direct or indirect reaction to an initial action from a rival firm. The measure of this competitive response depends on the perspective from which you are approaching competitive response. The most popular of which are the impact and speed perspectives.

1. The Impact perspective: From this perspective, competitive response can be measured in line with

(a) the level of second mover benefits the response bestows on the responding firm from sharing the monopolistic rewards of the first mover's initiating action which prompted the response in the first place.

(b) the level at which it improves the responding firm's market position

(c) its observable erosion of a rival's profit or market share (some actions and responses are aimed not at acquiring benefits but solely for the erosion of a rival's benefits (from the schumpeterian and Austrian School of Economics theoretical premise of 'creative destruction').

* Measuring a competitive response from an impact perspective, involves a comparisons of the objective for carrying out the response and the observable outcome of the response. Then based on individual firm grading parameters, determine the extent to which the response objective was achieved or fulfilled.

2. The Speed perspective: from this perspective, normally found in most competitive interaction literature, the speed of competitive response of rivals is the focal point of measurement. In micro level competitor analysis and during competitive intelligence activities where firms try to understand and deduce the competitive patterns of a rival firm as well as in competitive dynamics when researchers try to map the competitive intensity of a given industry for instance, measurements of competitive response are frequently carried out. The speed with which firms respond to the competitive actions of rivals is usually measured from the date the initial action was carried out by the initiating firm, to the date a clearly observable response action was taken by one or more of its rivals. Normally this is calculated in days, months or years. How fast or how slow (speed) a competitor responds depends on the comparison of the average value in days, months or years calculated for a firm (firm value), and the average value in days, months or years calculated for all the firms within the same industry (industry value).

I hope this answer was close enough.

I think this is the best explanation. congratulations and hank you, Lawrence.

@Welington.. appreciated, thanks.

The strongest tool for beating the competition is using innovativeness and producing innovations. In attachment you can find the principles and a practical measurement example of a concrete sector (set of companies) using the Company Innovative Leadership Model.

Article Measuring the Bulgarian IT Sector Innovations Capabilities T...

Article Company Innovative Leadership Model