Not every leader’s insight is as sudden as Dale Fushek’s. Some arise out of study and reflection. In 1875, when Mark Twain was busy writing Tom Sawyer and the first useful electric light was just an idea in Thomas Edison’s mind, John Fairfield Dryden and a few partners began what would come to be known as Prudential Insurance Company (now Prudential Financial) in a basement in downtown Newark, New Jersey. It was the first company in the United States to make insurance available to working-class people.
Dryden’s insight about the need for affordable insurance to mitigate the financial problems of the poor came as the result of his studies of the Prudential Assurance Company of London while he was a student at Yale. Dryden’s first product was low-cost burial insurance for factory workers. One biographer speculates that Dryden’s insight was influenced by his own ill health, which caused him to abandon his studies. Whether his own physical difficulties were a source of his insight or not, Dryden did, like Fushek, view his enterprise in the clear and deep way that characterizes insight. He once said, ‘‘Those providing life insurance services should be Missionaries of Love.’’