The fact that some innovations succeeded despite having to tiptoe around patents is more of an example of survivorship bias.

When we get something working first, there are probably some optimal partial solutions there. Working around the patent means having to do some things inefficiently while being able to provide better efficiency or cost of the overall system.

In my work, I all too often see that the obvious optimal solution we come up with turns out to be patented and we are spending time on finding least bad worse solution. (unless our patent lawywers manage to pussh through a patent for the same thing with different wording, like measuring period instead of measuring frequency)

In some cases it is not possible. For example, 3D printing was held back for 20 years just because of sleeping patents.