Many outfits have tried to reinvent the Lockheed Skunk Works, but to no avail, because they always tried to improve on it by removing its core principles.
Though I must say, SpaceX may be its worthy successor.
SpaceX doesn't really do any sort of frontier research. They do technology. They are taking concepts that have been done in the past and doing them more economically.
They have pushed the state-of-the art with projects like Raptor-2, but doing fundamental research and simply doing engineering are different things.
The C programming language was a successor of other programming languages, too. Not a completely new entity, the first programming language of the world.
Innovations that aren't on the frontier of knowledge, but have great potential for mass deployment, are precisely those that tend to have the biggest impact on humanity as such.
Though I must say, SpaceX may be its worthy successor.