coalition-and-partnership-games

Read [runtime](../../content/RUNTIME.md) and [advisory rules](../../content/policies/advisory.md) before applying this skill. Other Foreman layers and the catalog are in `../../content/`, relative to this SKILL.md. # Coalition and Partnership Games Three cofounders sit across a table, dividing equity. The technical founder built the prototype. The business founder brought the first paying customer. The third contributed the initial capital. They settle on equal thirds -- the path of least resistance, the conflict-avoidant default, and, according to the mathematics of cooperative game theory, almost certainly the wrong answer. Equal splits assume equal contribution, equal replaceability, and equal outside options. These conditions virtually never hold. The Shapley Value, developed by Lloyd Shapley in 1953 (work that earned him the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012), offers a mathematically rigorous alternative: allocate based on each player's average marginal contribution across every possible ordering of the coalition. The calculation is not intuitive, but its logic is unassailable -- and it transforms equity conversations from emotional negotiations into structured analyses. --- ## The Framework ### Coalitions: Why They Form and Why They Matter A coalition is any group of players who agree to coordinate their actions for mutual benefit. In business, coalitions take many forms: cofounder teams, strategic alliances, joint ventures, supplier consortia, investor syndicates...