Helping rivals widens your moat

Actively supporting competitors — via shared standards, joint platforms, or mentorship — can enlarge the market, raise quality thresholds, and create interdependencies that make you harder to dislodge than a narrow, zero‑sum leader. This is not mere altruism but a repeatable strategic move that trades short‑term share for longer‑term resilience and bargaining power. — If taken seriously, this reframes competition policy, antitrust debates, and corporate strategy: interventions that encourage selective cooperation may produce more durable innovation and consumer benefit than pure breakup or punishment.