Sometimes serendipity leads to the most incredible discoveries. In 2012, Rita Briody, an IT analyst for Erie Insurance Group, saw a prototype of Google Glass through a friend who was a principal architect for the glasses at Google X, the company's extremely private research and development lab for new technology. After some discussion with Google, Briody became a pioneer in the Glass Explorer program and agreed to beta test the product for the company.

She invited Brett McCorkle, a senior programmer analyst at Erie, to also participate in the test. McCorkle joined the team and shortly thereafter had an event that led to an insurance claim. The adjuster came lugging a good deal of equipment and what was an unfortunate incident turned into an incredible research opportunity. Call it serendipity or a flash of brilliance, but after talking to the adjuster, McCorkle wondered if Glass could be useful in this situation. He asked Briody about the possibility and they agreed this could be a great use case. 

They took their idea to senior management and were invited to enter it into Erie's "think ahead" event, a competition designed to elicit new ideas from employees. Their idea was one of four winners and they were given approval to pursue their pilot program with the claims department.