On Friday, July 8, 2016, Howard Raiffa, one of the founders of the Program on Negotiation (PON), died at the age of 92. Howard, as he would insist we call him, was a founding theorist in the fields of decision science, decision analysis, negotiation analysis, and related domains. To those of us at PON, he was a regular source of inspiration, leadership, and friendship.
His groundbreaking book, The Art and Science of Negotiation, was published in 1982, three years before the launch of Negotiation Journal. It has become one of the all‐time most widely cited books on negotiation. Whether measured by citations on Scopus and the Web of Science or citations on Google Scholar, it places second only to Getting to Yes (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991).
Howard contributed to each of the first three issues of this journal—advancing theory and practice. In the first issue, he introduced the concept of “post‐settlement settlements” as a way to conceptualize and discover unrealized value left “on the table” by negotiators (Raiffa 1985a). His interest was in both the theoretical value of demonstrating that mutual gains could be found even after a one‐sided negotiation and in the practical idea of intervening to make both sides better off.
In the next issue, he introduced the idea of a “Mock Pseudo‐Negotiations with Surrogate Disputants” as a way of unfreezing intractable conflict (Raiffa 1985b). He observed that disputants locked in small “hot” wars or other deep conflicts often find it easy “to imagine their plight being even worse than it is.” Much harder is to imagine a path to things being better. He offered a five‐step process for developing a simulation that captured the true realities of a conflict in which surrogate disputants might surface alternative agreements that could help the actual disputants.
Finally, in the third issue of Negotiation Journal's inaugural year, Howard challenged the classic NIMBY (not in my back yard) reaction to siting environmental waste and other disruptive changes with an article on “Creative Compensation: Maybe ‘In My Backyard’” (Raiffa 1985c). He described how to take what was a polarizing situation and convert it into a negotiated dialogue. In the process, he applied decision analysis principles in practical ways.
Over the years, Howard was a regular presence at PON events and his colleagues tell many “Howard” stories. For example, I recall a workshop many years ago when he was asked what to do when there are just two negotiators, with a single issue, on which they have exactly opposite views. Without missing a beat he responded, “complicate it. Add more issues or more parties.” This deceptively simple answer was built on years of rigorous scholarship on how the numbers of parties and issues affect negotiation dynamics.
Howard retired in 1994 as Harvard University's Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Managerial Economics Emeritus, a joint endowed chair at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, but he continued to conduct research, mentor students and faculty, and contribute to our community.
In the special twenty‐fifth anniversary issue of Negotiation Journal, Howard's PON colleague James Sebenius acknowledged the breadth of Howard's scholarship and his contributions to negotiation analysis in the context of his contributions to game theory, statistical decision theory, and decision analysis (Sebenius 2009). In the process, he helped us to appreciate the journey that negotiation theory has taken from symmetric descriptive analysis to asymmetric prescriptive guidance, taking into account the dynamic nature of negotiations.
Howard Raiffa's scholarly contributions have been honored and celebrated in many arenas, but we nonetheless look forward to a special focus on his work in a forthcoming issue of this journal, which will be co‐edited by James Sebenius and Max Bazerman. Howard Raiffa will be deeply missed, even as his ideas and our memories of him continue to guide us.
