Most great things are accomplished by them, often by teams of them. They don't just run around and brag about their success.
For instance Polio wasn't nearly eradicated by people like Musk, it where hard working ordinary people.
BTW most of the things attributed to Musk are done by his employees, the ordinary guys who never accomplish great things /s
I think the idea is crazy people make the proof-of-concept, non-crazy people perfect the idea.
With the important note that things getting moved forward by crazy people is not the same thing as saying most crazy people move things forward. Most do nothing of note.
Solutions are seldom the result of one lonely working geniuses.
For instance the internet or FB changed the world, but I wouldn't categorize their inventors as those crazy ones mentioned in the article.
We just tend to attribute special features to the most well known people, higher endurance, greater skill, stronger will.
There are way to many inventions and companies to thinks the world is formed by a few 'crazy' ones.
The only crazy one who achieved that are the real crazy ones and they didn't change the world to the better, see Putin.
Even that was a team effort and I doubt that people like Sabin count as that kind of crazy mentioned in the article.
Those are average scientists, not meant pejoratively, on the contrary, doing their job and sometimes the results have a big impact.
Danitation was created by digging thousands miles of pipes, nanufacturing billuons of toilets, designing facilities to produce billions of bars of soap.
Peolle is sillicon valley run in circles chasing innovation in transport, but more than half of high speed rail in the world eas built over the past 9 years in china. 90% of eorld electric busses run in china. India has probided toilets for 600 million people. All of that required soneone to pick up a shovel, and political will to organise shoveling.