Howard Raiffa Quotes

Ideas are incestuous.

We act like a zero-sum society, when in reality there is a lot of non zero-sum fat to be skimmed off to everyone's mutual advantage.

It's worth repeating here, though, because we are talking about mechanisms for resolving conflict and many people don't realize it's impossible to devise a foolproof scheme.

It's easy, of course, for two teams to collude, but somewhat more difficult for twenty-eight-

Game theory, however, deals only with the way in which ultrasmart, all knowing people should behave in competitive situations, and has little to say to Mr. X as he confronts the morass of his problem.

It is always amazing to see how wide a spectrum of results can be obtained from replicating an identical negotiation with different principal actors; it makes no difference whether there subjects are inexperienced or whether they are senior executives and young presidents of business firms. That is an important lesson to be learned here.

Final-offer arbitration should have great appeal for the daring (the risk seekers) who play against the timid (the risk avoiders).

The need is not for the creation of new analytical techniques specially designed for the negotiation process, but rather for the creative use of analytical thinking that exploits existing techniques.

Advice: don't embarrass your bargaining partner by forcing him or her to make all the concessions.

Disputants often fare poorly when they each act greedily and deceptively.

the mediation of internal conflicts can be resolved by linkages with other problems.

A lot depends on the starting point.

The best practical advice then is: try to maximize your expected payoff, which is the sum of all payoffs multiplied by probabilities.

The party that negotiates in haste is often at a disadvantage.

A mediator is an impartial outsider who tries to aid the negotiators in their quest to find a compromise agreement.