Overview

Information access and its exploitation (e.g. AI, analytics) have had a profound impact on negotiations between individuals, companies and investors. Those not at the frontier are at a competitive disadvantage. This course teaches you how information and artificial intelligence affect which deals are most valuable, and the right frameworks for striking a successful deal. The lessons will be most useful to anyone entering today’s labor market, entrepreneurs starting new ventures, and investors. Students will develop their strategy through simulated negotiation exercises, experience from guest speakers, and practice in the field along-side experts.

Educational Objectives

To get a sense for the fundamental shift in negotiating today’s labor market, consider the following: in today’s environment, your expertise can be codified. Consider the new Tom Hank’s film Here, where an AI model of Tom’s acting expertise can be used to face-swap and de-age him. Using similar technology, the emails, presentations and digital trail of your judgement on-the-job can be transformed into a model of your expertise that is disembodied, scaled, recombined and sold. How should you manage, price and negotiate over the data generated by your work? What if instead, you find yourself the owner of data generated by people you employ? We will use theory and evidence from economics, law, and psychology to understand what your best strategy is, and to anticipate how the labor market and economy will be transformed by these negotiations in aggregate.

We will cover the more intimate negotiations that have been impacted, including working with your romantic partner, dismissing an employee, and organizing collectively with colleagues to strike deals. We will examine how to value and negotiate privacy. We will assess how the movement for greater transparency changes who gets what, and negotiation strategy. Throughout, students will develop a process for recognizing the elements that have, and have not, changed fundamentally in the era of information access and exploitation.

Career Focus

This course is designed to help students negotiate the value of their expertise, manage others’ expertise, and invest in expertise, in a world where information and AI fundamentally change the nature of how expertise can be packaged, scaled and negotiated.

Grading / Course Administration

Students will participate in simulated negotiations; dedication to these exercises will account for 50% of the grade. The remainder will reflect participation in class.