How to Negotiate Anything!

Bob MacWright - We all negotiate in our everyday lives. If you buy a car or a house, it's expected. If you hire a contractor to work on your house, you can usually negotiate to get a better deal. Sometimes you can get a better salary if you negotiate before taking a new job. If you don't negotiate at the flea market, you are paying too much! We negotiate in our personal relationships too, such as deciding with your family where to go on vacation, who will do the dishes, and - perhaps the toughest negotiations of all - getting your children to do their homework or clean their room! At the Office of Technology Development, we negotiate very complex legal contracts with industry, such as technology licenses and research agreements. But if you look beyond the intricacies of the OTD contracts, the strategies and tactics we use in negotiation are just as useful in the negotiations we all face in everyday life. This session will describe some general features common to all negotiation situations, and explain how to prepare in advance, how to use logic and persuasion, how to recognize when the other party is being illogical, and how to rebuff such illogical arguments. In the process, you will not only learn how to be a more effective negotiator yourself, but you will also gain useful insight into how OTD negotiates with industry.

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  Science & Technology