Is it better to be original or than to imitate or use the ideas of others

Over the last two decade, Apple, a technology company specializing in hardware and software, has released a series of innovative and attractive products successfully and has triumphed in the tech sector. However, none of their 'breakthroughs' were indigenous to Apple, but instead, many other companies and inventors had attempted to market the same type of product in the past. Similarly, Facebook, a social-networking website that dominates the social-networking market, was not a unique creation of it Founder (Mark Zuckerberg), but instead a much more competitive version of the social-networking sites already available. We can see that two companies have triumphed in their respective fields, both because their ideas were original, but rather they were imitated. Newton had once said 'If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants'. Similarly, Plato had said 'Good artists copy, great artists steal'. Therefore, we can see that even great people and companies succeed when they  imitate or use the ideas of others. This happens because when we imitate an idea, we usually tend to refine it, and although the initial holder of the idea had triumph, we triumph because we imitate and modify the idea.

 By imitating or using someone elses idea, we tend to modify the idea. This makes the idea more appealing, and so we become successful with it. However, if we didn't imitate or use the ideas of others, being successful would be usually harder. This is because first it will take more time to form our own ideas instead of using someone elses, and then when we have the idea, it may not be as perfect as it could be. Imitating others idea insures progress, because until the idea is not refined till it becomes a hit, the idea would be reused and reused, hence progress will be made. However, if imitate or use the ideas of others we form just our own ideas and no else copies it because they think it is wrong to imitate or use the ideas of others, just like we do, progress will be rare, and the world would full of just original ideas, nor refined ones. We also learn by imitating or using the ideas of others. When companies imitate another's company ideas, they learn from what the other company did wrong, and they learn from what they did right.

Is it better to imitate or use the ideas of others than be original because imitation ensures progress and learning. As I discussed before, of everyone used original ideas, how would the human kind ever progress?