what is a nash equilibrium 
the nash equilibrium is an important concept referring to a stable state in a game where no player can gain an advantage by unilaterally changing a strategy assuming the other participants also do not change their strategies the nash equilibrium provides the solution concept in a non cooperative adversarial game it is named after john nash who received the nobel prize in 1994 for his work 14who came up with game theory game theory is largely attributed to the work in the 1940s of mathematician john von neumann and economist oskar morgenstern it was developed extensively by many other researchers and scholars in the 1950s 2 it remains an area of active research and applied science to this day the bottom linegame theory is the study of how competitive strategies and participant actions can influence the outcome of a situation it s relevant to war biology and many other facets of life game theory is used in business to represent strategic interactions in which the outcome for one company or product depends on actions taken by other companies or products 