There's often 2 extreme ends of the notion of "rapid growth". One is grow fast and break everything, another is slow and stable growth. Both are right, but both are aimed at different ends of a startup - one is at really early stage, one at later stage. Diffusion growth curve explains this nicely. In between both these stages is where the most amount of rapid growth happens - in expanding market, leveraging new innovations and business models. This what sets traditional businesses apart from startups.