Working Capital Conversation: Leading thinkers, practitioners and experts discuss the ideas that drive global business.

The road to business success is obviously a challenging one — indeed, there’s no proven straight path. Or if you have one, please let us know.

But one path many try to take is to learn from the masters — the successful leaders, entrepreneurs or managers that came before us. If we’re lucky, we find such a mentor in our own company. But what if you can’t? Or, better, what if you could learn from one of the true masters of the craft — former GE Chairman and CEO Jack Welch?

Odds are, you don’t have his number. But one place that does is the Jack Welch Management Institute. Instead of a traditional MBA, this successful organization delivers qualified participants an online MBA. And while Welch serves as Executive Chairman, they deliver access to other CEOs and instructors and successful business leaders as well. How does it work? Why is this different than a traditional MBA? And does getting admitted also provide you with Welch’s phone number?

Dean Sippel is Chief Executive Officer of the Jack Welch Management Institute.

Working Capital Conversation: Leading thinkers, practitioners and experts discuss the ideas that drive global business.

Wouldn’t life be easier if only getting into college were determined solely by price – who could pay most? Or marriage – love to the highest bidder? Or a new kidney – How much you got to survive?

The ideas seem laughable. Yet we live in an era that celebrates free markets and seems to celebrate the role of pricing in markets. But thanks to a range of factors – some old, like tradition; some new, like smart phones – new markets are popping up everywhere. And they’re not always developed by the traditional free market rules or price dynamics.

So how do and should these new markets work?

That’s what the Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences Alvin Roth set out to define. He explored the dynamics – rules, processes, expectations and more – of matching markets. Roth is Professor of Economics at Stanford, and one of the world’s leading experts in market design and game theory. His newest book describes that market design. It’s called “Who Gets What – and Why.”

Working Capital Conversation: Leading thinkers, practitioners and experts discuss the ideas that drive global business.

Many of us spent our recent Memorial Day weekend not only welcoming summer and paying respects to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, but also we kept an eye on Texas and Oklahoma.

You surely know: Devastating tornadoes and storms caused widespread damage and terrible flooding: At least 14 people died, and more are missing; Houston officials declared an emergency at the highest level of its four-tiered emergency management system; schools and businesses were closed or delayed.

The human toll is terrible and occupies our thoughts and prayers. For survivors – residents and businesses – their next set of prayers just may be to answer the question: Will my insurance cover this? And how will my rates skyrocket now?

Insurance and risk management are central to business and personal well-being – They’re also a very hard to understand. How should risk be measured and analyzed? Given that natural disasters – from Florida to New York to Texas and beyond – regularly and unexpectedly create massive business and personal loss, how can individuals and organizations, private and governmental, make better decisions regarding risk? Indeed, what should the public-private relationship in insurance look like?

Few think about the mechanics, consequences and business of insurance more than Howard Kunreuther. He is Professor of Decision Sciences and Business and Public Policy at the Wharton School, as well as co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. He has served as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council and written numerous papers and books – including the landmark “Insurance and Behavioral Economics: Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry” – on his long-standing interest in ways that society can better manage low-probability, high-consequence events related to technological and natural hazards.

Working Capital Conversation: Leading thinkers, practitioners and experts discuss the ideas that drive global business.

It’s one of the oldest rules in business, if not life: Keep It Simple, Stupid. So why is it so hard to do?

We are, it seems, overwhelmed by complexity – especially in business. Contracts. Fine Print. Procedures. It’s no surprise that nearly every company seems to have it’s own BPU – Business Prevention Unit.

So what if you actually want to get something done. Not just in business, but in your life? What if you want to cut through the morass and red tape… and simplify. How does that get done?

Donald Sull believes he has an answer. Sull is a Senior Lecturer in the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. With his co-author, Sull has studied companies and people who make simplicity work.

Turns out, these people don’t live in some magical world, where everything is easy. They create frameworks that simplify the things that are meant to be hard.

And now those frameworks themselves have been simplified for the rest of us in Sull’s book “Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World.”

Working Capital Conversations: Leading thinkers, practitioners and experts discuss the ideas that drive global business.

At a time when many of the large or publicly-held companies globally are focused relentlessly on how to grow, today we talk about one growth strategy that, at first glance, might not seem closely related: How to sell.

More specifically, Divestments.

It’s no secret that many companies see divestments as a fundamental part of their capital strategy, especially to fund growth. What you may not know is:  We now should expect that trend to grow.

How do we know? Ernst & Young recently released a new and important review: It’s 2015 EY Global Corporate Divestment Study. They spoke with more than 800 corporate executives across sectors and around the world. And the headline is clear: More than half of the companies surveyed expect the number of strategic sellers to increase in the next 12 months.

Why is divestment such an important strategy? Which sectors will use it most and why? Most importantly, what defines success?

Paul Hammes is the Ernst and Young Global Divestiture Advisory Services Leader and co-author of the study. He works on carve-outs, tax-free spinoffs, roll-ups, IPOs and more across a range of industries.

Working Capital Conversations looks at The Sharing Economy – businesses like Uber or Lyft or AirBNB rewriting traditional business models so that people like you and me can compete with major corporations.

Thinking to stay at the Hilton on your next Paris vacation? Why not rent a room – or a condo – from a local Parisien, getting more space at a lower cost. Tired of waiting for a taxi during New York rush hour? Hire a private car, and get alerts telling you once it’s arrived.

But just as the Sharing Economy is changing personal economics, it also impacts big business, with tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and transactions. The newcomers gain billions in valuation and revenue. Major brands create sub-brands to compete.

So what’s it really like inside the Sharing Economy? What does it mean to be a buyer or a seller? Is this a passing fad – the selfie of global business?

Joel Stein wanted to find out. Stein, of course, is a writer, reporter and humorist at Time Magazine. His cover story – “Baby, You Can Drive My Car, and Do My Errands, and Rent My Stuff…” – explores the Sharing Economy and provides answers with the mix of insight and absurdity that Stein has delivered for years.