it's a team sport, but each field of life, from farming to making movies, has a group of laser-focused people who invent new things or ways of doing things that explode productivity

the first guy who designed a superior farming machine would have been an example, while the old farmer pushing his horse along not wanting to know about machines would the counter-example. there are always people thinking about things and progressing things in their own field

a construction worker is vital, but he is working on a blueprint that has been designed by someone else. he's not inventing, he's following orders basically.

even in something like surgery, there are pioneers inventing and coming up with new ways and the general mass that is happy to keep doing the current way. which is fine, but doesn't progress the respective field .

some fields then have outsized impacts on humanity , like Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch who figured out how to extract nitrogen from the air and convert it into ammonia, which could be used to make synthetic fertilizers. the impact on feeding the world was massive