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For 19 years, the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School has grown and thrived under the leadership of Managing Director Susan Hackley. As PON’s chief administrative and financial officer, Hackley has overseen all activities, including academic events, executive education, interdisciplinary programs, and publications, including Negotiation Briefings. Hackley, who has taught negotiation seminars around the world, is widely admired for her ability to create new programming, build consensus, and collaborate to spread the word about negotiation best practices and new research findings. On the eve of her retirement, we asked Hackley to reflect on the negotiation skills she draws on to advance PON’s mission.

In their race to develop effective Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, pharmaceutical companies are hammering out complex partnerships in days and weeks rather than months and years. Their stories offer advice for setting up lasting relationships when time is of the essence.

The year 2020 continues to offer negotiators lessons on the virtues of adaptability.

In these difficult times, many of us are thinking about how to help make the world better, including in our negotiations. The good news is that we can do so without huge sacrifices, writes Max H. Bazerman, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, in his new book, Better, Not Perfect: A Realist’s Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness (Harper Business, 2020). Bazerman talked to us about how negotiators can create more value for all by broadening their perspective.