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Sued for patent infringement, chemical manufacturer C.K. Claridge tries to design a settlement strategy taking into account a decision analysis of litigating v. negotiating. The plaintiffs are the patent holder and its sole licensee, who is also a CKC competitor. (This case is a revised, alternative version of "C.K. Coolidge, Inc. (Abridged)," HBS No. 607-006.)

CEO Bill Nichol must somehow negotiate a surprise ultimatum from Walmart, his largest customer, about his largest and most profitable product line: "We're dropping it." Among its hosiery products, the Kentucky Derby Hosiery Co. produces and sells a branded line of infant socks to Walmart under an expensive license from another manufacturer, subject to unconditional, multi-year sales minimums and significant forward financial obligations. Taking out long-term bank loans, his firm has purchased modern, high-speed machinery to manufacture this line. Yet his Walmart contracts run only one year at a time. Without the Walmart volume and profit on these branded infant socks, Kentucky Derby Hosiery Co. faces financial distress. In a generally bleak North American textile environment, Nichol ponders the most promising negotiating strategy and tactics to rescue this product line.

This case describes the multi-prong negotiating approach that Bill Nichol, Kentucky Derby Hosiery Co. CEO, took to deal with an ultimatum from his largest customer, as well as the outcome of this process. It concludes with a number of Nichol's observations about supplier-retailer negotiations.

You may think that the biggest political risk to your assets in a developing country is outright seizure by its government. Not so. Other, less overt policy weapons have become the main threats, and it takes political deftness to anticipate and outwit the players who wield them. Wharton's Witold J. Henisz and Duke's Bennet A. Zelner discuss the tools, both human and technological, that businesses can use to outmaneuver the forces that put their foreign profits at risk. They also share success stories of companies such as the Italian oil giant Eni, which has managed overseas risk by balancing operational efficiency with political capital, mastering the art of political spin, and hitting the pressure points of local stakeholders. Together, the authors' insights constitute a set of best-practice guidelines for assessing the landscape abroad and for modeling political decision making.

Recommended for MBAs, this case is one of a pair of cases used in a merger negotiation exercise. It is designed to be used with "Mars, Incorporated" (UVA-F-1612), but it can also be used on its own. One-half the class prepares only the Wrigley case, and the other half uses the Mars case. Wrigley and Mars are considering a merger and are in the process of negotiating a merger agreement. Macroeconomic assumptions, particularly forecasting future sugar prices in an uncertain environment, and assumptions about Wrigley's value make Wrigley's future cash flows difficult to predict.

Recommended for MBAs, this case is one of a pair of cases used in a merger negotiation exercise. It is designed to be used with "Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company" (UVA-F-1607), but it can also be used on its own. One-half the class prepares only the Wrigley case, and the other half uses the Mars case. Wrigley and Mars are considering a merger and are in the process of negotiating a merger agreement. Macroeconomic assumptions, particularly forecasting future sugar prices in an uncertain environment, and assumptions about Wrigley's value make Wrigley's future cash flows difficult to predict.

Karen Levy and her colleague, Margaret Ndanyi, have spent the last six months planning and preparing for a national Kenyan program to target school children most at risk for parasitic worm infection. One week after its launch, the program seemed to be going well but Ndanyi and Levy knew that it still needed to be administered in almost 40 districts at thousands of schools. They wondered: Would they meet their goal of deworming over three million school children before the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2009? Would they be able to do it for less than $0.50 per child?

Karen Levy and her colleague, Margaret Ndanyi, learn the results of their nation-wide effort to rid Kenyan school children of parasitic worm infection.

Roll Back Malaria, a global partnership dedicated to fighting malaria has not met its founders' expectations of effectively combatting malaria. In 2005, after several internal evaluations, RBM leadership has decided to engage the Boston Consulting Group to work on a Change Initiative that when completed will enable RBM to address the eradication of malaria both more effectively and through larger scale efforts. However, the Initiative has become derailed after BCG's first major presentation to the RBM board. Will this end the Change Initiative prematurely?

In September 2008, as Lehman Brothers struggled to survive, John Thain, CEO of Merrill Lynch, realized that his bank was also on the brink of failure. Throughout the weekend of September 13-14, 2008, Thain successfully negotiated a deal with Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, for BofA to acquire Merrill. However, throughout the fourth quarter of 2008, Merrill's financial condition deteriorated at an alarming rate, with expected 4Q08 losses ballooning from $5.3 billion in November to over $12 billion by mid-December. Shareholders of both companies approved the deal on December 5th, 2008, but soon after, Lewis telephoned fed officials and declared he would invoke the MAC clause to exit the deal unless fed officials provided government financial assistance. Fed officials instructed Lewis to "stand down" and not to invoke the MAC clause. As he convened his Board on December 22nd, 2008, Lewis had to make a decision. Should he close the deal "for the good of the country?" Or should he declare a MAC and exit the deal, potentially invoking the wrath of the U.S. government. Was there another way?

This case examines the various considerations relevant to selecting and compensating workers in a context where their work involves a pro-social component. This is relevant to not only health care in Zambia, but to NGO and public sector workers who are both motivated by the mission of their positions and the remuneration. Zambia was facing a healthcare human resource crisis with less than half of the healthcare workers needed to meet health needs. Yet, it was simultaneously burdened by high incidence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, malnutrition, and respiratory and diarrheal diseases. The Zambian Ministry of Health (MoH) realized that in the short term, it would be impossible to train the number of doctors and nurses needed to fill this gap. Thus, they were considering incorporating the primarily volunteer community health worker (CHW) force into salaried health workers of the MoH. Given the high level of personal commitment and dedication combined with the proper education and skill needed to be an effective community health worker, the MoH was struggling to identify the best strategy to recruit and retain motivated and capable CHWs.

This Excel model is used to analyze the deals made in The Real Property Negotiation Game, which simulates the experience negotiating the sale, purchase, or financing of a property.

Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) vehicles - often called "driverless taxis" - sought to combine the best characteristics of cars, taxis, and trains, while adding features unavailable in any existing transportation system. Like cars and taxis, PRT vehicles carried small groups - often just a single passenger - with no need to wait for a shared vehicle to arrive or for others to board. Yet PRT followed train systems in using an exclusive right of way that avoided delays from other traffic. Where would such systems be most useful? Could system designers successfully compete with well-established networks of trains, buses, cars, and roads?

Negotiation is an essential skill for personal well-being and professional success, a skill that begins with identifying and acting on one's wants and needs. Many individuals, however, lack the confidence, motivation, or training to simply ask for what they want in certain situations; for example, when negotiating with an important client. Still others are reluctant to initiate requests in general. This article discusses the personal characteristics and situational factors that influence an individual's likelihood of engaging another party in a negotiation, making a request, and optimizing that request. Herein, specific suggestions are offered for managing this critical phase of the negotiation process via three steps: mental preparation prior to the engagement; positioning prior to, and at the point of, the engagement; and verbal craftsmanship during the delivery of one's request.

One Acre Fund (OAF) was founded by Andrew Youn in 2005 for the purpose of helping to solve the chronic hunger problem in Africa. The idea is to provide the resources (seed, fertilizer, and education) necessary for African farm families to feed themselves when their land holdings are one acre or less. The business model of OAF is that of a cooperative: OAF buys resources like seeds and fertilizer in bulk at reduced prices and distributes them to small farmers who otherwise could not afford them. This case concerns the negotiation that OAF's manager of external relations and research, Moises Postigo, conducted to buy fertilizer in the last quarter of 2007. The case provides an opportunity for students to analyze a real-world deal-making negotiation in a developing economy. A number of aspects of the context of the negotiation and the negotiation process itself make for good class discussion. Postigo did a good job preparing for the negotiation, making the case one that emphasizes proper use of negotiation planning and sensitive understanding of the negotiation environment. Some of the elements that make for good discussion include the following: OAF was a new organization, unknown to the five major providers of fertilizer in Kenya. The negotiations were entirely conducted by cell phone. Negotiations went through stages of request for a bid, discussion with multiple bidders, selection of a provider, and negotiation. There were multiple issues, including price delivery and form of payment. Postigo was negotiating in the shadow of the possibility that the Kenyan government would start selling subsidized fertilizer to small farmers.

Five experts gathered recently to discuss the future of enterprise risk management: Kaplan, the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, who with his colleague David Norton developed the balanced scorecard; Mikes, an assistant professor at HBS who studies the evolution of risk management and the role of the chief risk officer; Simons, the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at HBS; Tufano, the Sylvan C . Coleman Professor of Financial Management at HBS; and Hofmann, the chief risk officer at Koch Industries. The panel was moderated by HBR senior editor David Champion. Among the questions they addressed were: How predictable was the financial meltdown of 2008-2009? Did new tools for assessing risk give a false sense of security? How do the challenges facing industrial companies differ from those facing the financial sector? Is outsourcing an effective risk-management tool? Have capital structures become a bit too efficient in many companies? What makes a good chief risk officer?

Risk managers should plot their organizations' fraud threats on a heat map. They'll want to look carefully at the upper-left quadrant, where unlikely - but potentially devastating - risks lurk.

Taleb (who wrote the best-selling books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan) and his coauthors argue that conventional risk-management textbooks don't prepare us for the real world. For instance, no forecasting model predicted the impact of the current economic crisis. Managers make six common mistakes when confronting risk: They try to anticipate extreme events, they study the past for guidance, they disregard advice about what not to do, they use standard deviations to measure risk, they fail to recognize that mathematical equivalents can be psychologically different, and they believe there's no room for redundancy when it comes to efficiency. Companies that ignore Black Swan (low-probability, high-impact) events will go under. But instead of trying to anticipate them, managers should reduce their companies' overall vulnerability.