Every day we talk about disruption as if it's mostly positive within the business and consumer environment. But for companies today, both large and small, an array of challenges and potentially disruptive events can have a real negative impact on the company, its earnings, its employees and its customers.

Corporate executives today realize that the degree to which they can anticipate and prepare for that disruption will have a deep impact on how it all turns out on the other end. What's more, many of the approaches and techniques that today's companies can and should adhere to just might be applicable to the chaotic lives of all of us.

Studying this for years is Wharton professor Howard Kunreuther.  He's the James G Dinan Professor of Decision Science and Public Policy and co-director of the Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s the co-author of Mastering Catastrophic Risk: How Companies Are Coping with Disruption.

My conversation with Howard Kunreuther: