Skunkworks, underground, and off-the-radar initiatives are a lot more common in large technology organizations than people might imagine. While you may have "Product Action Committee's" and "Executive Commits" and "Roadmaps" that theoretically set the mandate/budget and resourcing for the company, many of the best projects occur because a few (sometimes only one) smart engineer or manager gets it in their mind to do their own thing.

I will admit, it takes a little gall to hide an entire T&E budget to Japan on a skunkworks project though. Great Story.