Yes. The probability of people inventing something seems to vary widely from "everybody can sustain that problem for centuries until somebody has a good idea" to "the moment people know the requirements, everybody will invent this".

And it's very unlikely that we can know where any invention falls on that distribution before it's made. We may not even be certain about some after they are made.

Anybody talking about tech inevitability or some universal version of the Great Men theory (in support or rejection) is wrong.