mutually beneficial agreements

The following items are tagged mutually beneficial agreements.

Keeping the Game Out of Court

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Sometimes those on opposite sides of a bitter dispute can achieve great gains – if only they can spot the ways in which they are similar.

In 2001, the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA), an organization of five New York-area colleges best known for staging college basketball’s National Invitation Tournament, filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). MIBA allege that certain NCAA rules governing team participation in preseason and postseason tournaments restricted school’s participation in MIBA tournaments, in violation of various antitrust laws. After four years of litigation, the two parties announced not only that they would settle a lawsuit but also that the NCAA would purchase the rights to the MIBA preseason and postseason tournaments.

Apple and Samsung: A Dispute Between Business Negotiators

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

For two days in late May, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Gee-Sung Choi met with a judge in the U.S. District Court of Northern California in an attempt to reach a settlement in a high-profile U.S. patent case, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Back in April 2011, Apple filed a lawsuit accusing Samsung of copying the “look and feel” of the iPhone when the Korean company created its Galaxy line of phones. Samsung countersued Apple for not paying royalties for using its wireless transmission technology. Since then, the number of patents under dispute has skyrocketed, according to the Korea Times, as has the number of courts involved in various countries. The two companies have repeatedly accused each other of copying the appearance and functions of their smartphones and tablet devices.

When We Expect Too Much

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

How often have you heard a friend or colleague refer to a contract as being “in the bag,” only to find out later that the deal didn’t go through? There always turns out to be a good reason a negotiation fell apart. Yet the fact remains that most negotiators are overconfident about their chances of reaching agreement. A common cognitive bias, overconfidence causes us to have unrealistically high expectations of success, in negotiation and in many other aspects of life.

How emotions affect your talks

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

Adapted from “Negotiating Under the Influence,” by Jennifer S. Lerner, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Imagine you’re about to negotiate with a competing firm about a possible merger. You enter the conference room and find a reasonable and fair representative from the other company, someone you’ve reached mutually

Go the extra mile

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

Adapted from “Build Rapport—and a Better Deal,” by Janice Nadler, professor, School of Law, Northwestern University.

In negotiation, rapport is a powerful force that can promote mutually beneficial agreements. Negotiators who already have a good working relationship are fortunate to have rapport built into their interactions. Strangers, however—especially those whose communications are limited to telephone or