Bitcoin, if you read the full history of it, took 5 years to develop.

Dan developed 2.0 tech years before anyone else (and that only a few coins so far have even began to test using) and decided it wasn't going to meet the complete need set (e.g. scalable, fast and efficient) so he trashed that model and moved on the 3.0 (which currently no project is using) and is about 2 years ahead of anything available.

That 3.0 solution was also just not quite what we wanted, but is solid enough for some real world applications that don't need near-infinite scalability, speed and efficiency.  

The brainstorm came about 6 months ago when he landed on the 4.0 concept of the FABRIC active consensus method.  This method is truly next-next-generation in functionality.  You'll understand why after reading the patent and whitepaper.

Long story short:  A world-changing system requires more time than to just copy/pasta work already done by others.