The web was the original lateral thinking with weathered technology.

Hypertext (including links!) existed in a local-only form.

The internet existed, too, in a fledgling state.

It was just duct taping the two together, to make something, as Tim Berners-Lee's boss famously wrote in the margin of the initial proposal, that was "Vague but exciting".

Totally ordinary components with an outcome like alchemy.

A disruptive innovation.