The Quickest Way to Be Unique

* Brilliance! You produce something wonderful, un-derivative, and that you otherwise would never have hit upon

* Convergence: you re-invent a wheel. Maybe you re-invent a wheel that was being overlooked, but nevertheless, someone has been here before.

* Drek! Your uneducated stab in the dark results in results that are unaesthetic, unproductive, unenlightened and unloved.

And, realistically, that list is in increasing order of likelyhood. I think there's a lot to be said for playing around before you go out and check on what others have done, but I wouldn't ship that uniqueness.

On the contrary. Copy (great) ideas as much as you can. Learn from the masters - many masters. Then, eventually, you'll be not just unique, but actually good too. Being unique because you completely, totally suck in some original way is not worth doing.

Interestingly, your example:

Eventually, you'll borrow concepts seen elsewhere, and incorporate some of the best ones. But similar to musicians who find 'their sound' while playing their mastered instrument, you'll find a unique signature style that comes through in your own work.

Is actually a counter-example. Most musicians become unique from copying other people for years, or even decades.

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 :)