Here is a list of some major areas of business practice to which game theory is now routinely applied. I won’t try to explain the basis of these applications now, since for that you’ll need to see more of the actual techniques. So this is just motivation:

- the design of payment schemes for employees

- the fixing of managers’ salaries

- decisions about when to open and close plants

- decisions about how much, and when, to invest in R&D

- decisions about whether, and when, products of R&D should be applied internally, marketed externally or mothballed

- decisions about when, and for how much, companies should seek to acquire each other, either through merger or takeover

- ways in which companies should structure themselves in order to maximize internal efficiencies

- methods by which companies can try to avoid mutually destructive price-wars

- ways in which companies can invest in their human capital while minimizing risks of costly spillovers

- ways in which companies can minimize government incentives to try to raid rents from their profits

- ways in which companies can best position themselves for possible changes in economic regimes (e.g., new technology entering their markets, new government policies, new circumstances of international trade and finance)

- ways in which companies should bid in tenders and procurement auctions

- basic decisions on the pricing of products