Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and other bands from that era were experimentors, explorers, what they did was grounbreaking in a musical sense, they laid down the basics for a lot of different kinds of electronic music , just as much as Jarre but in a practical sense they were quite less useful.
Ever seen the studio of Kraftwerk? or Tangerine Dream's? they're caves of analog perfection, instrumental heaven and utterly not usable for 99.9% of people, you wanted a synthesiser? well a Moog Modular would set you back 50.000 bucks and this beast while magnificent is a pain in the ass, changes in temperature means the oscilators will go out of tune, a little dip in voltage and it would spontaniously make a sound, its fragile, heavy and so on.
Jarres main contribution was to get the music out of the studio and into the crowd.
He and his team invented ways to use synthesisers and related equipment for everyday use also, he wanted to make his electronic music to be understood by normal people, he used bass rhythems, melodies on top, something to dance on!
He was a pioneer with digital sampling, he was showing the way, in 1983 he published an album called ZooLook, it was already pretty damn close to dance already.
At that time he used the peak of what was possible, his Fairlight digital synthesisers were of course not affordable but the later 80's brought FM synthesis and the like which made it all far better for bands.
Stage shows? laser projections and the like? who showed the way? one answer possible: Jean Michel Jarre!
So all in all, in a musical sense, sure, you can't go around Jarre's colleagues, but he was the one who brought it to the people, in 1976 Oxygene instantly changed the whole world of electronic music, it went from electro geek only to pretty much mainstream.
My 2 Euro cents.
