These trends are either evolutionary or entirely predictable. Several so predictable that they first made their debut in movies long before most of us were born.

I think this is what he means. Working on any of these ideas doesn't make you an innovator. You might do something in a slightly better or more novel way, but we aren't inventing crap.

And if you don't execute on your slightly better path, you'll still be beat by someone with a slightly worse idea who buckled down and delivered.

Silicon Valley is littered with companies with better ideas and better base products that lost.