In its most rudimentary form, reverse engineering can be defined as “going backwards through the development cycle”. It has  its origins in espionage when rival countries would break apart a product from the opposite country and figure out its mechanism in order to build a similar product. Wikipedia defines reverse engineering as:

Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g., a mechanical device, electronic component, or software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in maintenance, or to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without utilizing any physical part of the original.

When I started my career at an Indian public sector telecommunication company, one of the projects that I worked on was a versatile multiplexer. At that time the Indian market was still closed and technological know how from the more developed countries was limited. We did not even have a sample of the multiplexer, just a technical brochure with a feature list of the product. I am not sure if that can be called reverse engineering, but our team did manage to build a working product. By the time it hit the market, I had left the company so I do not know how well it fared. However, I had other brushes with reverse engineering, both successful and not-so-successful.