Books

3D Negotiation – Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals (Harvard Business School Press, 2006)

The Manager as Negotiator (The Free Press, 1987)

Articles and
Case Studies

The resources listed below are a small sampling of written resources and links we've chosen to give you a better idea of who we are and our approach to negotiation. (A much more complete list of publications can be found in Prof. Sebenius' publications list.)

Negotiation Articles
Negotiation Case Studies

Interviews and
Presentations

Harvard Business Review IdeaCast™
Management Consulting News Interview
Harvard Business School Alumni Presentation
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Interview

Instructional Resources

David Lax and James Sebenius’ first book, The Manager as Negotiator, is an established textbook at the Harvard Business School and many other leading graduate schools.

Additionally, our principals play central roles in these programs at Harvard:

• Strategic Negotiations: Dealmaking for the Long Term, presented by the Harvard Business School, in London and Boston; a week-long, intensive program in which, according to HBS, "some of the world's most influential business leaders will work with some of the world's most sophisticated negotiators to explore powerful dealmaking concepts and skills that maximize a negotiator's ability to create and claim value on a sustainable basis."
  
• Strategic Public Sector Negotiation, presented by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, in Cambridge; a week-long, intensive program which, according to the Kennedy School, is for "senior level executives in government and their international equivalents, and senior executives in private and nonprofit organizations with heavy government interface. Negotiating successful formal agreements and productive informal understandings."
  
• Advanced Negotiation: Deal Design & Implementation
  
• Negotiating Complex Business Deals, soon to be offered by the Program
  on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, by David Lax, James Sebenius, and
  Guhan Subramanian.

(Note: these programs have no affiliation with Lax Sebenius LLC. Contact the Harvard sites directly for more information.)

Professor Sebenius’s Publications page on the HBS site also lists many of his teaching and training materials.

What's Being
Said About Our
Intellectual
Capital

"Every so often, a book comes along that sheds entirely new light on an old subject.  Most negotiation books, my own included, focus too much on tactics at the table.  Lax and Sebenius certainly draw on their extensive deal experience to offer plenty of battle-tested advice on tactics.  Yet their striking new book opens up two new dimensions.  Their chapters on the art and science of deal design go well beyond anything yet written on just how to create value on a lasting basis, including both the letter and spirit of the deal.   And there is simply nothing like their systematic development of the art and science of moves away from table to set up the most promising possible situation for face-to-face tactics.  Twenty years ago, Lax and Sebenius coined the phrase "creating and claiming value" and changed the negotiation field by making its implications the cornerstone of their first book.  I predict that 3-D Negotiation will do it again."

-Howard Raiffa, Professor emeritus, Harvard Business School, author of the Art and Science of Negotiation, Negotiation Analysis, and co-author of Smart Choices.

"[James Sebenius and] David Lax have now blended messy reality with elegant analysis to produce a first-rate piece of work. Readers facing tough deals, along with generations of Harvard MBAs and executives, will benefit greatly from this lucid book and its highly relevant case studies. I recommend it highly."

- Peter G. Peterson, Senior Chairman and co-founder, The Blackstone Group

"3-D Negotiation is simply the most sophisticated and practical guide to negotiation ever written. Its many fascinating case studies show you exactly how to apply its powerful method."

- Mathias Doepfner, CEO, Axel Springer, one of Europe’s top media companies

"At last, practical advice on how to overcome obstacles that prevent us from getting to yes."

-Roger Fisher, coauthor of Getting to Yes

"Twenty years ago, The Manager as Negotiator by Lax and Sebenius raised the bar for negotiation theory and practice. With 3-D Negotiation, they've done it again. With its highly original focus on away-from-the-table 'setup' moves and sophisticated prescriptions on value-creating deal designs, 3-D Negotiation provides an innovative analytical framework that will proof indispensable for those seeking practical negotiation advice."

-Robert H. Mnookin, Williston Professor of Law, Chair, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School, co-author of Beyond Winning and Barriers to Conflict Resolution.

"Finally, the negotiation book we've been waiting for -- sophisticated, practical, multi-dimensional, and effective in the real world of commercial deals and disputes. Lax and Sebenius avoid the one-dimensional approach of the chest-thumpers, game-theorists, and idealists and demonstrate how the best negotiation results can be achieved by any serious bargainer who takes the time think through the problem, prepare, and apply a complete set of strategies and tactics. This is a giant step forward in the negotiation field, but also a magnificent contribution to those of us who work in the middle between negotiators who too often fail to find the deal or the best deal."

-Eric D. Green, Professor of Law, Boston University, successful mediator of many complex disputes including the United States v. Microsoft anti-trust case and the MasterCard/Visa merchants' class action, and co-founder and Principal, Resolutions, LLC and EnDispute, Inc. (now JAMS).