Barry Nalebuff- Good people act Badly because of wrong incentives

Barry Nalebuff is Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale SOM where for thirty years he has taught negotiation, innovation, strategy, and game theory. He speaks with us on why "Important projects are often easier than trivial ones", why "Be prepared for others to screw up" and why you should "Feel free to bend the rules". Hosted by Duff Watkins.

About Barry Nalebuff

Barry Nalebuff is Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale SOM where for thirty years he has taught negotiation, innovation, strategy, and game theory. 

He is the co-author of six books and an online course. Thinking Strategically and The Art of Strategy are two crossover books on game theory with over 400,000 copies in print. Co-opetition looks beyond zero-sum games to emphasize the potential for cooperating while competing. Why Not? offers a framework for problem solving and ingenuity. Lifecycle Investing provides a new strategy for retirement investing. Mission in a Bottle tells the story of Honest Tea. His Negotiation course (available for free on Coursera) has 67,000 active learners and the second-highest net promoter score on the Coursera platform.

In 1998, Barry together with his former student Seth Goldman cofounded Honest Tea, a company that sells ready-to-drink iced tea that tastes like tea. One of Inc. Magazine’s fastest-growing companies, Honest Tea has now sold its second billionth bottle of tea. In 2011, the company was purchased by Coca-Cola. His second venture, Kombrewcha, is a slightly alcoholic version of kombucha. The company was acquired in 2016 by AB-Inbev. He is currently working with Quaker Oats to help create Maker Oats, an unusually thoughtful overnight oats product.

He works with many entrepreneurial firms. He serves on the board of Q Drinks (started by his former student Jordan Silbert), Calicraft Beer, and AGP Glass. Alongside startups, he has extensive experience consulting with over fifty multinational firms. He advised the NBA in their prior negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association and served on the board of Nationwide Insurance. A graduate of MIT, Rhodes Scholar, and Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows, Nalebuff earned his doctorate at Oxford University.

 

Episode Notes

Lesson 1: Imagine that you have 10x more money than you presently have. What would you do differently in your life? 02m 52s

Lesson 2: Important projects are often easier than trivial ones 05m 33s.

Lesson 3: You have to be fundamentally different and better to get noticed. 08m 18s

Lesson 4: If you think A is the right solution but you know others favor B, then make an impassioned case for B before explaining why A is the correct solution. 14m 24s.

Lesson 5: GOOD people are led to act poorly by BAD incentives. 18m 50s.

Lesson 6: For each action you take think about it from 3 perspectives.24m 25s.

Lesson 7: It isn’t enough to be right. You have to persuade others that you are right. 29m 45s.

Lesson 8: Be prepared for others to screw up. 31m 14s.

Lesson 9: Feel free to bend the rules 38m 27s.

Lesson 10: ?.