There's so much attention on this field right now (something like ~100 papers hitting arxiv a day). Is the possibility of being blind-sided by a "next generatio

There's so much attention on this field right now (something like ~100 papers hitting arxiv a day). Is the possibility of being blind-sided by a "next generation" technique really plausible? Isn't it more plausible that someone is just piecing together a couple key public papers in a novel way?