So long as "the industry" refers to the maker community [since the RPi was never really intended as an industrial product], it has done a lot. And it shows by

So long as "the industry" refers to the maker community [since the RPi was never really intended as an industrial product], it has done a lot. And it shows by the number of copycat products available. I personally know dozens of people who never would have experimented with robotics or electronics if it weren't for the RPi. An Arduino/clone opened up the world for a lot of people. But being able to just type a command on the Pi and see something happen does a great deal for the learning process. And it provides a somewhat familiar GUI to get it up and running before continuing on. The fact that it doubles as a low end computer helps justify the cost.