Definition of "bottom-up" []

• Progressing from small or subordinate units to a larger or more important unit, as in an organization. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The first which we call our bottom-up strategy is to hit every one of those 700 generations plants with a local WESCO sales person, local WESCO inventory, local WESCO service."
• "Its decision-making approach was defined as a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, democratic manner," which seems to include so many advisory groups—including governments, registries, other nonprofits, companies and network security specialists—that no single interest group dominates."
• "These are supposed to be assessed in terms of their costs and benefits combined in business to indicate return on investment so that the general managers can assess each, compare and rank them, and accept only as many as the capital funding available for a given period will allow.11 Because of the impetus of the flow from unit managers to general managers, capital budgeting is sometimes referred to as bottom-up strategic planning."