3D Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals.

3D Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals. By David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius. Harvard Business School Press, 286 pages. $29.95.

To anyone who thinks deal-making is a simple transaction at a table between two parties, 3D Negotiation offers a different view. This is a long and detailed book that makes a case for a new way to look at the negotiation process--and to come away with much more of what you want.

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The authors, partners in the negotiation firm of Lax Sebenius LLC (author Sebenius is also a professor at Harvard Business School) posit a three-pronged approach to negotiations. Conventional bargaining, they write, leaves money on the table and puts one party at a major disadvantage if the other holds all the cards.

Great negotiators, they argue, set up the most promising negotiation and envision value-creating deals even before they sit at the table. They do so by concentrating on three elements: tactics, deal design and setup. Using this "3D" roadmap, negotiators can create maximum value for their side.

Using good examples from corporate transactions involving companies like McDonald's, Mazda, Kennecott Copper, Microsoft and America Online, 3D Negotiation is full of perceptive advice for corporate strategists about how to get the most from a negotiated deal.