Clever, lazy college students pioneered the Internet of Things all the way back in 1982, rigging a vending machine so they could monitor whether sodas were available and cold. Today, the IoT is saving lives and transforming the insurance industry.

The IoT has moved well beyond novelty gadgets and smart thermostats — it's now at the heart of a fundamental shift in how insurers think about their role. Rather than simply paying claims after tragedy strikes, forward-thinking carriers are embracing a Predict & Prevent model, using connected devices to stop losses before they ever happen.

No one embodies that shift more compellingly than Bob Marshall, co-founder of Whisker Labs and the creator of Ting — a small device that plugs into a wall socket and detects the electrical arcing that causes tens of thousands of home fires each year just in the U.S. What started as a deeply personal mission after his sister-in-law's house burned down in 2015 has grown into a partnership with nearly 40 carriers, with Tings now installed in approximately 1.4 million homes and counting.

But Marshall's story isn't just about a remarkable piece of technology. It's about what it actually takes to bring an IoT innovation to scale in a conservative, data-driven industry — the patience required to satisfy actuaries, the importance of aligning business model incentives across all parties, and why simplicity can make or break consumer adoption. He's candid about the headwinds and equally enlightening about what's working. 

Read the full interview to find out how Whisker Labs is racing to get Ting into tens of millions of homes — and what the journey reveals about the future of IoT in insurance.

Paul Carroll

I’m often intrigued by how far back the roots of innovation go. For instance, we know that automobiles trace back to at least the 1770s, because the first auto accident was recorded in 1771; a Frenchman hooked a steam engine to a cart and crashed into a wall.

 As for the Internet of Things, our ITL Focus topic for this month: Some students at Carnegie Mellon rigged a vending machine in 1982 so they could monitor whether it had sodas available and whether they were cold. In 1993, students at the University of Cambridge pointed a camera at a coffee pot and got it to send a live feed to their computers so they could see if coffee was available without having to walk over to the coffee station. 

Those IoT examples say something about how clever students can be about being lazy, but I’m more interested in what they say about adoption curves. The IoT is avant garde these days, yet its roots trace back more than four decades. 

You’ve become the poster child for the Predict & Prevent model for insurers, based on your innovations with the IoT that led to the Ting sensor that plugs into a wall outlet and detects electrical problems. You’ve done the research and shown that you can prevent so many fires that dozens of major carriers are giving Ting to customers at no cost. But you still face headwinds. 

What can you tell us about the headwinds that IoT innovation faces and about how you’re overcoming them?

Bob Marshall

I would probably qualify the notion of headwinds or challenges. We're distributing roughly 50,000 Tings a month, and by many measures that would be considered extraordinarily successful.

We want to go faster—not just for business reasons but because we're trying to have an impact on homes, families, communities, and society. If we can get Ting into tens of millions of homes, we will be able to help prevent electrical fires, protect families and prevent loss at an even greater scale. Still, we’re approaching 1.4 million homes with Ting today.