Campus & Community

Around the Schools: Harvard Business School

2 min read

In business and personal negotiations, you may hold your own while negotiating dozens of successful deals. Even so, you want to take your game to the next level. What’s the next step?

There are plenty of guides that offer tips on negotiation strategies. As useful as these are for a grounding in the fundamentals, they don’t always fit the complex, ever-changing deal situations that occur in today’s business environment. Harvard Business School (HBS) professor Guhan Subramanian is working to fill that gap by examining complex deals where negotiators are fighting on multiple fronts — across the table for sure, but also on the same side of the table with known, unknown, and potential competitors.

This winter, Subramanian will publish “Negotiauctions: New Dealmaking Strategies for a Competitive Marketplace” (W.W. Norton), a book that draws on his experience studying and advising on complex corporate transactions and high-stakes personal ones, such as buying a home or car. The first Harvard faculty member to hold tenured appointments at both Harvard Business School, where he is H. Douglas Weaver Professor of Business Law, and Harvard Law School, where he is Joseph Flom Professor of Law and Business, Subramanian is the faculty chair for the new HBS Executive Education course “Managing Negotiators and the Deal Process,” taking place this week (Nov. 8-13).