Defining Good Deals in Business Collectives

• Main Author: Michael Ayukawa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Carleton University 2011-03-01
• Series: Technology Innovation Management Review
• Online Access: http://timreview.ca/sites/default/files/Issue_PDF/april11_osbr.pdf

In the context of a current project at Carleton University to create creating a deal-making platform, this article presents the results of a recent review of the literature to determine: What is a good deal? This is question is asked from the perspective of the stakeholders in the development of a software-based collaboration tool that is designed to help streamline deal development between members. The stakeholders include the creators, the users, and the investors. We answer this question by examining several streams in the literature, all centered on understanding deals and deal-making processes. These streams explore the concept of a win-win deal, how value may be seen differently, and the group processes involved in deal making. A key contribution from this review suggests that deal goodness can be separated based on a Me-We construct: the impact to each and every stakeholder of the deal and the impact to the entire collective (not just the deal stakeholders). This implies one can separate the platform management problem into actor-centric (Me) and linkage-centric (We) domains. This is consistent with the notion of players balancing their self interest with the other stakeholders in the deal (Me-We). This is also consistent with the prospect of managing ecosystem health based on player and network-based metrics.