Whilst I get what the author is trying to say, I strongly disagree. Ignorance of competition does not make your thought original, it just makes you ignorant of

Whilst I get what the author is trying to say, I strongly disagree. Ignorance of competition does not make your thought original, it just makes you ignorant of the competition. It suggests that any thought you have in isolation is by definition "unique". But unfortunately that's not the case. How many times have you said to a friend, "You know what would be awesome?!?! If we built <blah>", and they say, "oh you mean like <blah>?", "D'OH!". You'd be mad to go about building something without first testing that there is a market for what you're building, or that that market isn't already well served. You can't do either of those things without researching your topic of interest. It's all well and good to build that feature you've always dreamed of, but unless anybody else in the world wants it, what's the point? Finally, to suggest that drawing on your own experience is ok, is just contradictory. If you're an expert in a certain field, how can you possibly expect to isolate yourself from everything in that field? This would suggest the only way to be original is to only work in fields you don't understand or have experience. But then maybe I missed the point of the post :)