Fast Company, a magazine that often uncovers little gems, reports on a unique business model being pursued by insurance giant FM Global. Instead of deploying armies of actuaries to predict the risk of certain types of disasters (fires, physical plant injuries, and soon), FM Global actually tests the risks of certain kinds of events occurring, and makes recommendations to its clients for how to avoid disasters in the first place. Brilliant!
What I particularly liked about their approach is that they have figured out a way to align interests in the pursuit of prevention. In most situations, there are plenty of resources to address problems after they occur, but a reluctance to spend money on preventing the bad stuff from happening in the first place. FM Global has an innovative way of getting around this.