Some years ago, doing some research for our book MarketBusters, my colleague Ian MacMillan and I ran across some interesting experiments Progressive Insurance was doing to change the business model in the car insurance market. The idea was that, rather than basing one’s insurance bill on demographic factors such as how expensive your car is or how old you are, Progressive would allow customers to pay for insurance the way they might pay the phone bill — by monitoring actual usage and driving patterns. It was in testing for what seemed like forever.