Flutterby™! : Why Benchmark?

This is fantastic: Dan Luu: Why Benchmark? looks at products in and out of the tech industry, though there's the usual snickering at "web scale" databases:

Vehicle headlights: Jennifer Stockburger has noted that, when Consumer Reports started testing headlights, engineers at auto manufacturers thanked CR for giving them the ammunition they needed to force their employers to let them to engineer better headlights; previously, they would often lose the argument to designers who wanted nicer looking but less effective headlights since making cars safer by desiging better headlights is a hard sell because there's no business case, but making cars score higher on Consumer Reports reviews is an easy sell because that impacts sales numbers