Negotiating Industry Agreements

Program Overview

Negotiating Industry Agreements: Strategies and Tactics for Your Negotiation Toolkit

May 20 to May 21, 2019
Hyatt Regency Miami
Miami, FL

Industry and academia have two different roads on success. Industry succeeds by controlling and using knowledge as a benefit to its consumers, whereas academia succeeds from the open discovery and sharing of knowledge. With industry becoming an ever-increasing supporter of the research enterprises, these two roads intersect during research agreement negotiation.

The research agreement serves as the foundation of a research project. It defines the project’s importance to the parties, each party’s responsibilities and what each party will receive. A thoughtful and well-constructed research agreement provides clarity and accountability to both parties. In particular, the agreement provides the research institution a clear understanding of its obligations and any possible deliverables, as non-standard deliverables are often found in industry agreements. These obligations directly affect not only the research institution during the period of performance but also after closeout through issues such as liability and intellectual property. Ensuring that these issues are identified and managed up-front provides a greater likelihood of a successful project outcome and possible follow-on funding. This intensive is designed for working-level administrators who need detailed instructions on doing their jobs when dealing with industry and negotiating agreements.

Who Should attend

This intensive training is designed for:

  • Research administrators with responsibility for negotiating industry-funded research agreements,
  • Supervisors with limited knowledge of industry contract negotiations who supervise negotiators and need stronger knowledge on this topic to assist with negotiations; and
  • Research administrators who have three or more years of research administration experience and would like to broaden their knowledge.

Negotiating Industry Agreements

Day One will provide an overview of the typical negotiation issues arising in industry-funded agreements with a specific focus on identifying and mitigating critical terms and conditions that are encountered during industry agreements negotiations and assessing the business risk. Attendees will receive hands-on experience with mock agreement development, review and redline exercises.

Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the different philosophies, types of contracts/agreements, contract clauses, typical negotiation issues and financial terms in industry agreement negotiations.
  • Identify hot topic issues including data and cyber issues and other compliance issues.
  • Review changes/terminations, intellectual property management, subcontracting/purchasing, information management, closeout, etc.

Negotiation Strategies and Tactics

Day Two will discuss strategies and tactics that negotiators can use to increase the likelihood of successful negotiation. Attendees will receive hands-on experience through mock team negotiation exercises.

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify initial planning, the importance of information, result of strategy development, etc.
  • Understand positional negotiation, psychological negotiation, an integrated approach, etc. 
  • Understand methods, scheduling, team selection, negotiating styles and modes, meeting preparation, etc.
  • Apply tactics of negotiation: authority-related, diversionary, intelligence gathering, momentum