In Mediate.com’s recent series “Seven Keys To Unlock Mediation’s Golden Age” Michael McIlwrath, a Vice President of international energy technology group Baker Hughes Company, urged us to work together to “Develop a Negotiation Index”. By “index”, he did not mean a list or bibliography. Rather: a universally accessible reference of negotiation techniques and situations that classifies empirical evidence that may be more effective in given situations. Negotiators tend to adopt techniques drawn from their early training, what they once found to have been effective, or their own personal styles…With an organized classification of negotiation techniques and situations, parties and mediators could more easily make use of approaches with which they lack familiarity or comfort, but that may be more effective for their situation… And it could also spur the negotiation field to develop and test new techniques.

This negotiation “searchlight” vision stirred much excitement. Could data processing, advanced search engines, artificial intelligence and natural language user interface technology combine to help capture, process and interpret the cascade of complex and contradictory negotiation data, and metamorphose it into concise, quick-to-grasp information that negotiators and mediators could instantly access at the coalface? Surely, yes, but it will involve a collaborative effort by a large cohort of experts, and be superbly managed and well-funded.

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