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Negotiating Lessons From the Browser Wars

2002; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Volume: 43; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

1532-8937

James K. Sebenius,

Outsourcing and Supply Chain Management

Many negotiators focus too intently on parties, interests and options that are immediately evident The struggle involving Netscape, Microsoft and AOL over Internet browsers reveals why successful negotiators must take a much broader view both of the other side and of their own deeply held assumptions. In 1996, Web-browser wars became headline news. The conflict involved three of most important companies of early Internet era, Netscape, Microsoft and America Online. At stake was AOL's choice of a browser for its online service: Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Microsoft's apparent victory in this battle has inspired important books on antitrust, legal and business-strategy issues, but one area has gone mostly unnoticed: negotiation among players. All negotiations can be examined in terms of a core of common elements, contends negotiation expert James K. Sebenius, but a select few shed special light on process itself. The negotiation over Web browsers offers one such case. Drawing on copious public record, author provides thumbnail sketches of players and a brief description of dramatic process dynamics. He then draws a series of broader negotiation lessons suggested by this experience ? about need to assess full set of parties, issues and no-deal options; about benefits of crafting sustainable value-creating deals rather than value-claiming ones; about risks of arrogance and biases; and about changing game away from table, not just playing it well at table. Netscape's fall from dominance involved far more than faulty negotiation, and there's no guarantee that a broader view of negotiating process would have changed company's ultimate fate. But executives who find themselves in similarly thorny situations may be able to do themselves and their companies a great deal of good by looking beyond mythical table that too often limits possibilities inherent in any negotiation.