[sgt101]

eerrr...

I can only speak from experience with software, but several times I've been in projects trapped with implementations that take months to incrementally update and then seen clean sheet implementations blow them out of the water in a matter of weeks.

In one case I saw an implementation of a radio system that met 100% of the technical requirement that a staff engineer wrote as a side project in six weeks. The corporate implementation couldn't meet the spec, had taken 2 years and was being developed by scores of engineers.

Interestingly the corporate implementation was supplied to the customer, caused a huge reputational dent and was ulitimately scrapped... while the staff engineer was dismissed!

[Dalewyn]

>I've been in projects trapped with implementations that take months to incrementally update and then seen clean sheet implementations blow them out of the water in a matter of weeks.

Firefox vs. Chrome in a nutshell.

[ahartmetz]

Not the example you are looking for. KHTML -> WebKit (for a while, that was the engine of Chrome!) -> Blink.