I love when ideas or trends group themselves into themes. Today I came across an advertising campaign, a Research and Development product by the New York Times, and reactions to a news story about Apple gathering iphone user location. There is a common thread in all of these stories. Yup. You guessed it, "Collective Engineering."

Faris, in his post about the New BMW EVolve advertising campaign, almost wrote it as an aside:

"And the collective engineering data the it creates will be used to continue to develop the next generation of BMW Electric Vehicles."

Collective engineering is a fantastic way to describe the practice of putting your customers data to use. Not only to fulfill business objectives, but to design and build products that provide even greater utility. 

1) Here is the EVolve advertising campaign:

Collective engineering element --> Uses data from current BMW owners to discover if they are EV ready. That data, about how much owners drive for example, will be utilized in the development of future BMW vehicles. 

2) Cascade, By New York Times Research and Development. 

Collective engineering element --> Helps the New York times better understand the value of a Tweet, how stories spread on social networks, and identify key influencers by topic in a visually simple and stunning format. This data will (hopefully) be utilized to create news experiences that are better tailored and more relevant to individuals and curators alike. 

3) The Apple Location debacle. I guess this is conjecture, but I have to believe that Apple is tracking location data on its Iphone users to determine how to make its services better, not only for some sinister purpose. 

Collective engineering element --> By collecting location data, Apple can provide better services (especially in terms of allowing users to utilize LBS faster). 

A side note: There is no viable explanation as to why the data is stored on the phone for 10 months. Gulp. I'm going to choose to believe their only goal is to improve the quality of their product. 

Have you seen interesting examples of "collective engineering" lately? Do share.