Bhatia insists that what he's envisioned is more than just another urban agglomeration populated by low-cost engineers.

FORBES: Hot Trail

The cloud provides a low-cost way for engineers, product developers and even marketing folks to experiment with new ideas and test their feasibility within a short timeframe so that they can quickly move forward with successful ones.

FORBES: How The Cloud Changes Businesses Big And Small

As the big oil firms have sacked thousands of staff in cost-cutting drives, the independents have recruited geologists and engineers.

ECONOMIST: Small oil firms

According to Makerbot, the most well known in a crop of companies developing low cost 3D printers, the technology is being used by NASA engineers to develop parts for models, including for the Mars Rover, Curiosity.

FORBES: How 3D Printing is now helping NASA get to space

Vibration testing hasn't changed in 50 years -- and those shake tests may be too rigorous, forcing engineers to over-design everything (read: added cost).

CNN: liftoff

The project (Bell Labs declines to disclose its cost) combined the work of physicists, app developers, signal processing experts and video engineers.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Koch plans to unite its petroleum engineers with Purina's scientists to come up with high- quality, lower-cost blends.

FORBES: Creative destruction 101

Space engineers are keen on extending the internet to space to control spacecraft because of the considerable cost and time savings that can be made.

BBC: Earth orbit gets wired

Engineers were telling the services they could greatly improve Humvee features for about half the estimated cost of a new joint vehicle, and while it might not last as long as a new vehicle, refurbishing the existing systems would eliminate most of the costs and delays associated with developing a new system.

FORBES: Army Mistakes Endanger Future Jeep