One of the biggest things that made the prequels so innovative, wasn’t just the use of digital cameras or the amount of CGI or the use of Non-linear editing, etc. It was the COMBINATION of all of these things. Yes, eventually we would have gotten to where we are now. But the sheer amount of advancement in all of these technologies for one film (specifically Ep.2) brought about a good 15 years of advancement in a matter of 3-6 years.
This is all fine and well, but when we talk about “starting a trend”, I think about “inspiring someone else”, not just “providing the technology”.