Roger Fisher, one of the cofounders of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and Samuel Williston Professor of Law, Emeritus, was honored on the 8th of April with a celebration of his career, research, and contributions to both the HLS community and the field of negotiation.
Bruce Patton
Bruce Patton is a Distinguished Fellow of the Harvard Negotiation Project (HNP), which he co-founded with Roger Fisher and William Ury in 1979 and administered as Deputy Director until 2009. With Fisher, Patton pioneered the teaching of negotiation at Harvard Law School, where he was Thaddeus R. Beal Lecturer on Law for fifteen years. He continues to teach the Negotiation Workshop and Advanced Negotiation Workshop in the Harvard Negotiation Institute, the Program on Negotiation for Senior Executives, and occasional courses for law students. In 1984 Patton, Fisher, and three HNP alumni founded Conflict Management, Inc., a negotiation consulting and training firm, and Conflict Management Group (now part of Mercy Corps), a not-for-profit entity that works on conflicts of public concern. In 1997, Patton and four CMI/HNP colleagues founded Vantage Partners, llc, an international consulting firm that helps Global 2000 companies negotiate and manage strategic relationships for bottom-line results. Patton is the co-author with Roger Fisher and William Ury of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Second Edition, Penguin, 1991), and with Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen of Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Viking/Penguin, 1999). To date, there are more than 5 million copies of Getting to Yes in print in 36 languages, while Difficult Conversations is a New York Times business bestseller that has been translated into almost as many languages. Patton received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1978 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1984.
The following items are tagged Bruce Patton.
Leading Horses to Water
The hardest step in negotiation is often the first. Costly lawsuits can drag on it everyone is afraid to be the first to blink. Prospective buyers and sellers can waste endless hours dancing around a possible deal. And in collective bargaining, labor and management teams sometimes paint themselves into corners by refusing to negotiate “matters of principle.”
How much authority do they have?
Adapted from “Contracts 101: What Every Negotiator Should Know about Contract and Agency Law” by Guhan Subramanian (professor, Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter, February 2006.
While hammering out an agreement, a mid-level manager offered a customer a significant price discount. When the discount failed to materialize, the customer
Why Classic Cases?
Why are some negotiation exercises still used in a great many university classes even twenty years after they were written? In an effort to understand more about the enduring quality of some classic teaching materials, we asked faculty affiliated with PON to explain why they think some role play simulations remain bestsellers in the Clearinghouse
Dealing With a Stubborn Counterpart
Adapted from “Stubborn or Irrational? How to Cope with a Difficult Negotiating Partner,” by Lawrence Susskind (professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.
Suppose you’re an experienced salesperson entering into negotiations for a contract renewal with a company you’ve successfully done business with for years. Recently, your counterpart at the other company
Bruce Patton on Teaching the Micro-Skills of Negotiation
There is often a profound gap – of which we are typically unaware – between what we “know” or “believe” about effective negotiation practice and what we actually do as practitioners under pressure. Bruce Patton, the founder of Vantage Partners and co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project, advocates helping students master key “micro-skills” to enable
Who are the founders of PON?
The Program on Negotiation (PON) is the world’s first teaching and research center dedicated to negotiation, and its founders are among the true pioneers in the field. On April 8, 2003, seven of these founders gathered to reflect on PON’s beginnings in the early 1980s, and on their own journeys as leaders in the field
Sheila Heen
Sheila Heen is a Partner at Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. She also teaches courses for executives and lawyers through Harvard’s Executive Education series. Through her consulting practice Sheila has worked with a wide variety of clients.
Bruce Patton
Bruce Patton is a Distinguished Fellow of the Harvard Negotiation Project (HNP), which he co-founded with Roger Fisher and William Ury in 1979 and administered as Deputy Director until 2009. With Fisher, Patton pioneered the teaching of negotiation at Harvard Law School, where he was Thaddeus R. Beal Lecturer on Law for fifteen years.
Douglas Stone
Doug Stone is a Managing Partner at Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches negotiation. Through Triad, he consults to a wide range of organizations, including Fidelity, Honda, HP, IBM, Merck, Microsoft, Shell, the Nature Conservancy, and the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. He has also taught and mediated around the world.
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- Business Negotiations
- Conflict Management
- Conflict Resolution
- Conflict Resolution and Negotiation Across Cultures
- “Confronting Evil” Panel Videos Now Available Online
- Conflict Resolution Lessons from the Home: How Conflict Management Skills Transform Discord Into Harmony
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- Confronting Evil: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Conference underway
- Crisis Negotiations
- PON co-sponsored conference addresses the challenges of “Confronting Evil”
- Finding the Right Process in India
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- Dealmaking
- Dispute Resolution
- International Negotiation
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- Negotiating in China: The Gold Rush Mentality
- PON panel discusses Track II Negotiations, Islands of Coordination and Unilateral Moves in the New Middle East
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- An International Negotiation for an All-American Brand
- Mediation
- Mediating Tragedy: Managing the Boston Victim’s Compensation Fund
- What’s Wrong with Traditional Arbitration?
- Hiring a Mediator: A Checklist
- Social Perceptions at the Crossroads: Why Sex (Still) Impacts the Perception and Evaluation of Other Status-Linked Identities
- Dispute Resolution Using Online Mediation
- Meeting Facilitation
- Negotiation Skills
- Negotiation Training
- Register Now for the Program on Negotiation’s Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Seminar!
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- For Better Negotiation Training, Study the U.S. Government’s Mistakes
- Negotiating for Continuous Improvement: Use a Negotiation Preparation Worksheet
- Pedagogy
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