It's easy, of course, for two teams to collude, but somewhat more difficult for twenty-eight

The art of compromise centers on the willingness to give up something in order to get something else in return. Successful artists get more than they give up.

Game theory, however, deals only with the way in which ultrasmart, all knowing people should behave in competitive situations, and has little to say to Mr. X as he confronts the morass of his problem.

It is always amazing to see how wide a spectrum of results can be obtained from replicating an identical negotiation with different principal actors; it makes no difference whether there subjects are inexperienced or whether they are senior executives and young presidents of business firms. That is an important lesson to be learned here.

The best practical advice then is: try to maximize your expected payoff, which is the sum of all payoffs multiplied by probabilities.

It's easy, of course, for two teams to collude, but somewhat more difficult for twenty-eight

The need is not for the creation of new analytical techniques specially designed for the negotiation process, but rather for the creative use of analytical thinking that exploits existing techniques.