Copying others is a tried and true way of increasing your abilities. Painters don't just start out as masters, they often spend years copying other styles until they find what like themselves. There's only so much the human mind will come up with on its own, being presented with new problems in new domains, and how other people addressed them is one way of increasing ability.
Take the master of any domain, and their past is likely littered with experiments and copies of things that already exist, either because they thought they could do it better or because they wanted to understand that topic better.
Take the master of any domain, and their past is likely littered with experiments and copies of things that already exist, either because they thought they could do it better or because they wanted to understand that topic better.