After a tough negotiation, ever catch yourself thinking, “Oh, I wish I said this, or I should have done that”? But there’s nothing you can do about it now. Your mental light bulb clicked on too late.

In this episode we call back our friend Lakshmi Balachandra, who teaches negotiation and entrepreneurship in nearby Babson College. Prior to earning her doctorate, she juggled a career in which she worked in private equity during the day and improv comedy by night.

In this episode Lakshmi explains how knowing the basic rules of improv will make you quick on your feet as a negotiator, side-stepping obstacles and seizing unexpected opportunities when they pop up.

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Have you signed a consent form to participate in an experiment recently? Ever done so?

You might answer no, but actually the odds are high you’ve been conscripted without ever knowing it. That’s the message in a new book, The Power of Experiments, by our Harvard Business School colleagues Mike Luca and Max Bazerman. In this episode Mike describes both the positive and negative impacts of concealed research.

On the upside, it has taught public officials how to increase organ donations significantly by having people opt out of such programs, instead of asking them to opt in. But on the downside, Facebook, without permission, manipulates its user’s moods by how it framed their newsfeeds. And Amazon was caught sneaking unrequested gift suggestions into people’s wedding registries. To learn more about this troubling trend, listen in!

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