Do inventors really exist or are "inventors" just subjects of the inevitable ?

I was thinking of the Carl Sagan quote "in order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first creat the universe" when I asked myself wether people like Bell,Marconi etc. were just subjects of the inevitabe discovery of their inventions , is the real inventor the universe ? .. If Marconi had not lived would their have being someone else who would have discovered cross Atlantic communication ? Was a Marconi type always going to appear because of the inevitability of the universe ?