Sony didn’t invent the PlayStation. Ken Kutaragi did. 3M didn’t invent the Post-it Note. Scientists Spencer Silver and Art Fry did. Google didn’t invent Gmail. Paul Buchheit did.

Companies don’t create growth. People do.

For decades, companies relied on a proven growth playbook: top-down management. Bestsellers like In Search of Excellence, Built to Last, and Good to Great had a comforting promise: leaders can build companies and steer growth top-down with clever strategies and replicable processes.

Unfortunately, in the decades after publication, the companies celebrated in these books barely outperformed the market, McKinsey found. Many, including Amoco, Circuit City, Kodak, and Kmart, went bankrupt, were acquired, or downsized.

Top-down worked, until it didn’t.

The old playbook was designed to control change, not respond to it. Today, top-down management simply can’t keep up. The faster the world moves, the harder it becomes for a handful of leaders at the top to see every opportunity.

What organizations need now is people who make growth happen without waiting to be told. People who act from the bottom up. Seth Godin called them “Linchpins.” Lois Kelly and Carmen Medina described them as “Good Rebels.” Adam Grant studied them as “Originals.” Different names for the same pattern: people who dare to challenge the status quo and make new ideas happen—against the Resistance.