This week I’ve had four classes so far. In three of them, I’ve learned something that’s kind of profound in a way. So consider this the first of three posts in a series.

One of my classes is Negotiations. It’s part of my management major, but just talking, a lot of people think it should be a required course, since it’s a skill that’s not at all limited to management majors. I’ve had the professor before. He’s one of those great professors who keeps you engaged and yet doesn’t give much work. And despite the fact that there’s not a lot of work, you really learn a lot. So it’s sort of a win-win class.

When we met Monday night, he talked a bit about negotiations, and then gave us an exercise. We split up into teams of two. The assignment was that we were both bidding on a very rare fruit. I was part of a UN delegation, and we were extracting part of the prune to help grow food in infertile regions. My work would save 20,000 lives, and I was given a budget of $2 million to get these prunes.

It seemed like I had a slam dunk case. My strategy was to not even mention my price, just that I was going to save so many lives. How could he let all those people die?

He represented a major pharmaceutical company. So my strategy shifted a little–he probably wanted to research what was in them. So, in return for him not bidding on them, I’d give him a few of the fruits to study for free. That still left us with most of them, and would satisfy both of our needs.

It turns out that he needed all of them, for a new medication that would save lives, too, by preventing heart attacks. There goes my humanitarian appeal. And his budget? $5 million.

I tried to talk him into splitting the lot. I’d buy 2/7 and he’d buy the remaining 5/7, with our $7 million combined. But he had no incentive to do it–his boss wanted as many as they could get. (He also wouldn’t take a bribe.)

We went back to class and reported on our findings. A few groups, like us, couldn’t find any compromise. A few found bizarre compromises. But only one group found the ‘secret’ of the exercise.

We didn’t need the same part of the fruit. What was a ‘waste’ product to my firm was exactly what the pharmaceutical company needed. We even talked a little bit about our goals, but never got into enough details on what part of the fruit we needed. We just assumed we needed the whole fruit. I won’t be lame and try to point out the morals, but suffice it to say there are several.