I don't think Fowler pretends to be much of an innovator. The way I see it his work consists in collecting and documenting existing ideas from the industry. You

I don't think Fowler pretends to be much of an innovator. The way I see it his work consists in collecting and documenting existing ideas from the industry. You'll find many instances of patterns listed in PoEAA in open-source frameworks. His "refactorings" are also pretty simple ideas that people generally come up with on their own after a bit of work experience. It's just nice to have a nicely formatted book where they're given a name and they're illustrated by diagrams and examples, especially to help junior developers. You'll also notice that for each pattern or refactoring, Fowler generally tries to show its caveats. So it's not like he tries to sell his ideas at all costs. Note that here I'm talking specifically about Fowler, whose work I have found helpful with my real world projects.