The restaurants originally served up simple snacks, but as the city grew, they began competing for customers by improving the variety and quality of their dishes.

WSJ: The Best Dim Sum in Hong Kong | In Search Of

Multinationals are also competing for talent with China's domestic companies, which need to improve the quality of their people as their markets open to foreign rivals.

ECONOMIST: Human resources

"The benefit of having multiple investment managers, custodians and clearing firms all competing for our advisors' business is that you get to drive down costs and increase quality and empower the advisor to be the quarterback for his clients, " says Pottruck.

FORBES: OutFront

For them, competing with American farmers on vast fields with high-tech machines, high-quality seed and high-value subsidies is like attacking a battleship with a machete.

ECONOMIST: The problems of plugging a square economy into a round world

According to HD Guru's tests, the Toshiba did better than Pioneer's competing first-generation BDP-HD1 Blu-ray player on upconverting SD DVDs, while matching it on quality for high-definition content.

ENGADGET: Toshiba's second-gen HD-XA2 reviewed HD