Containerization and its orchestration all started in the south bay. Pray tell, what was in use in SF for 6 months before it hit the startups based in MV, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, etc.
There are always exceptions (like your containerization example), which can be attributed to serious tech players like Yahoo, Google and FB in South Bay. However holistically, SF has had much more unicorns and near unicorns. The contrast between SF and rest of the world has been more pronounced in recent year vs pre-2010 (except China of course - due to the growing economy and closed nature making it difficult for outside companies to operate).
Valuation has zero to do with innovation and using unicorns as a measure of bleeding edge tech is nonsense. Some of the very beat tech doesn’t necessarily turn into the best businesses.
And don’t forget, the South Bay has one of the most innovative middle-out compression innovators in history: Pied Piper.