Productivity is often portrayed as a gradual process of many firms incrementally innovating and improving efficiency. MGI’s latest research challenges that conventional wisdom. A very small number of extraordinary firms creates the lion’s share of productivity growth through bold strategies much more than through efficiency gains. Fewer than 100 productivity “Standouts” account for two-thirds of growth in our sample of 8,300 large firms in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Rather than many firms moving an inch, a few extraordinary firms move many miles—and productivity gains come in powerful bursts rather than through gradual diffusion of best practice.