Discussing this locally, I usually give example of iCar, which is a people transportation company that run borderline-afoul of taxi laws in my city (Kraków, Poland). Their innovation back ~10 years ago (or more) was to drive primarily by GPS, bill by distance instead of time, and thus being able to tell you how much you'll pay before even starting the trip. The primary point of conflict was, AFAIR, that iCar figured out a sorta-loophole that allowed them to have one taxi license for the entire company instead of for each individual driver.

There was some bad blood between them and the regular taxi corps, some tyres got slashed, but the court sorted things out, updated the regulations a bit, and now iCar and other companies happily coexist. The major difference between them and Uber is that they didn't keep breaking law with impunity, but engaged in finding a legal solution and made the entire space better for everyone.

Sure, this is not the path to exponential growth, but maybe not everything is best done by VC-backed "zero to billion dollars corporation in 5 years" businesses.