At BMW Chief Executive Norbert Reithofer last year assigned a group of employees to a skunkworks effort to develop a new vehicle for megacities--potentially even under a new brand.
He led the charge on key products including two skunkworks projects entirely of his own creation that ended up driving tens of millions of dollars of revenue for the company.
And producing ideas in isolated skunkworks ignores the basic reason for working for a big company in the first place to use its superior resources to supercharge what you are doing.
Nowadays, behind SkunkWorks' highly secure perimeter, engineers reportedly are working on the aviation wonders of tomorrow, including a lightweight cargo plane called the X-55A and a bizarre, blimp-like airship called the P-791 Hybrid Air Vehicle, which has special technology that allows it to take off and land just about anywhere.