Respect the work of others, even if you think there is something with a similar purpose already out there. It's their expression. They are not trying to reinvent the wheel. They are trying to create a better wheel, or a wheel that works better for their purposes.
The good news is that we were all born to be creative. The bad news is that our education system (and in particular, our training to become engineers) drives it out of us. Here’s a startling fact: We lose nearly all of our creativity between the time we are about 5 years old and the time we graduate from high school.
From one perspective, creativity is the ability or act of making something new. It's the quality that lets us go beyond our current designs, concepts, and perceptions and emerge with something completely new. It's the quality that lets artists start with a blank canvas and create masterful images. It lets writers start with a blank page or computer screen and create new stories. It lets sculptors start with a block of stone and create meaningful shapes. And it lets engineers start with a need and define products or processes that meet that need.
