Harvard Negotiation Strategy by Professor Birke

Professor Richard Birke presents a great tool to improve your skills concerning negotiation based on the Harvard model. Richard Birke teaches how to prepare for and behave in a negotiation through videos, downloadable theory, quizzes, cases and exercises. If you ever find yourself in a negotiation, either in your profession or in your personal life, you will find the skills and insights gained from this course a tremendous help!

Are you ready for an advanced exploration of negotiation? Then consider signing up for Advanced Negotiation Strategy By Professor Birke. In that course, Richard Birke combines all strategic and psychological aspects of negotiation.

Advanced Negotiation Strategy (By Professor Birke)

Richard Birke

Professor Richard Birke is an internationally recognized expert in negotiation. He has been a teacher of negotiation and mediation for more than 30 years. In addition to being an academic he is an experienced trainer, mediator and advisor.

Richard Birke is the executive director of the training and education department of the JAMS Institute. JAMS is a leading mediation and arbitration service provider in the United States.

Prior to joining JAMS, Birke was Associate Director of the Stanford Centre for Conflict and Negotiation and he was professor at the Stanford Law School. In 1993 he became the director of the Centre for Dispute Resolution (CDR). Under his leadership, the CDR grew to be one of the leading academic centres in the United States.



Harvard Negotiation Strategy (by Professor Birke)- Module 1

Choosing a negotiation strategy. Should I cooperate or compete?

The first and most fundamental question in any negotiation is whether you are cooperating with or competing against the other negotiator. We explore that question through the study of the prisoners’ dilemma, the negotiators’ dilemma and other tools of analysis. This module will help you solve such basic negotiation questions as:
  • how to get other negotiators to play fair
  • how to respond to threats
  • how to achieve outcomes that leave no value “on the negotiating table”

Harvard Negotiation Strategy (by Professor Birke)- Module 2

Preparing for Negotiation I – The “Harvard Method”

Perhaps the most highly regarded method for negotiation is the Principled Negotiation method that emerged from the book Getting to Yes.  The authors were founders of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and the ideas behind Getting to Yes still form the backbone of the so-called “Harvard Method” of negotiating.

This module is designed to help you become a better negotiator immediately, and we offer steps to start using the method for a negotiation on your desk right now.

Harvard Negotiation Strategy (by Professor Birke)- Module 3

Preparing for Negotiation II – Considering The Other Side

There are three different relationships between the interests of your own side and those of the other negotiators.  Interests can be shared – where more value for you represents more value for the other side.  They can differ – where your payoff and that of the other side are independent of each other.

They can conflict – as in a classic tug-of-war where every inch you gain is one the other side loses.  The management of these shared, differing and conflicting interests forms the core of the learning in this module.

You will learn:

  • why negotiators overemphasize conflicting interests despite great cost
  • how to recognize and use differences to create more value for your side
  • a deeper, practical understanding of principled, interest-oriented negotiation
  • how to prepare more effectively in negotiation

This module extends and refines the learning from the basic Harvard model, while reinforcing the method through simulations and work on real problems.