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Barry Nalebuff – Mission in a Bottle: The Honest Guide to Doing Business Differently — and Succeeding, Co-Founder of Honest Tea, Harvard Professor, Entrepreneur, expert on game theory, negotiation and business strategy.

So picture this – While teaching at Harvard University, Professor Barry Nalebuff is running his class through a case study comparing Pepsi and Coca Cola.  While speaking with his students, he get’s into an enthusiastic conversation with a bright young student named Seth Goldman.  The two continued the discussion after class and discovered that both of them had an affinity for flavored beverages but were frustrated with the mainstream options that were full of sugar. If there was only the perfect drink that had flavor without all the sugar.

Years would pass and the idea never materialized, but it lingered.  One day after a run, Seth realized that there was still no drink on the market that filled this gap and he decided to take matters into his own hands.  So he picked up the phone and called his old college professor – Barry Nalebuff.  It just so happens that Barry had just returned from India where he discovered what real tea tastes like – and it was something he had never before had in America.  The two now had their beverage and Honest Tea was born.

Join us this week as we learn from Barry Nalebuff, co-founder of Honest Tea and a truly interesting person.  We cover topics such as:

• How Barry used science and economics to determine the correct amount of sugar to put in Honest Tea
• What the heck is game theory?
• How to deal with adversity as an entrepreneur
• Does money change a man?
• and more!

Barry Nalebuff is an expert on game theory and has written extensively on its application to business strategy. He is the coauthor of six books, including his most recent: Mission in a Bottle: The Honest Guide to Doing Business Differently — and Succeeding. A graduate of MIT, a Rhodes Scholar, and Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, Nalebuff earned his doctorate at Oxford University. In addition to his academic work, he has extensive experience consulting with multinational firms, from American Express, GE, and McKinsey to Google and Rio Tinto. He advised the NBA in their negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association and serves on the board of Nationwide Insurance.

Lighting round resources:
1) What’s Barry reading these days? The Path to Power
2) What is Barry using to make life better? A Neptune SwimP3 player
3) Advice for the intellectually curious? Listen and find out!