The Art of Stealing

Is Stealing Bad?

Almost everyone frowns away from anything that has to do with stealing. But what most of us fail to realize is that one way or the other, we have all stolen. Now before you start to argue, please listen to my explanation.

I will like to talk about the two forms of stealing here:

The Act of Stealing.
The Art of Stealing.

What most people understand about stealing is that it is bad, and should be punishable by the law, but what they failed to realize is how it has shaped many things around us in positive ways. Now before you start thinking I am supporting what is bad, let me put up an explanation, there is no doubt that stealing is bad and should be punishable by the law. But then that aspect of stealing is what is referred to as "The Act of Stealing". The word Act means a specific behavior or action by an individual that can be intentional or unintentional and draws some consequences. Thus, the Act of Stealing is in reality, an action to take what does not belong to one, which by societal norms is wrong and attracts some penalty according to the law.

But then coming back to the subject of our discussion, which is "The Art of Stealing". The word Art simply means a form of creative expression, which requires a deliberate investment of imagination, skill and creativity. Thus, "The Art of Stealing" is the creative process of stealing an idea to get either a similar product or service or end up with even an advance one.

Now let me use an example to further give you an idea of what "The Art of Stealing" is. Browsing through the internet, I saw a shirt that looks very nice and stylish, so I decided to take a screenshot, and sent it to my Fashion Designer to make me a dress with that same design, now let's say after a week or two, my Fashion Designer has come up with even a more nice and stylish cloth, now from the first gaze, one would say the clothes are identical (the one I screenshot on the internet and the one my Fashion Designer made for me). But then no one can claim that I stole their cloth. Because I didn't.

The same thing is also in the Tech world, let me take Programming languages for instance. The most popular Programming Language C was gotten from B Programming Language, and many other modern-day programming languages like C++, C#, Java, Python, Perl, PHP, Swift and Rust etc. were all initially built with C programming language. Despite using all these languages, you will see that they look like C Programming languages, but then their implementation varies as well as their application. All of them are unique in their way.

We can go on and on and on to establish this same fact across various industries, and we will see that this applies to almost all fields.

What is Invention?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is a new idea, method or device. Invention in my own words is the birth of an idea, and we all know what follows birth, what follows birth is growth and development. So we can say that the existence of anything today is based on the invention or creation of that thing.

What is Creativity?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it is the skill and imagination to create new things. So in essence, creativity helps to create new ideas from an already existing idea, thus leading to the diversification of an invention.

What is Innovation?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, refers to either something new or a change made to an existing product, idea or field. So we can say that it is a new idea gotten from an Invention or a change made to an invention be it a product or an idea.

From Invention to Creativity and Innovation

From what Invention, creativity and Innovation is, we can all agree that, where we can only have one invention of a particular idea or product, we can have several creativity and innovation around that Invention.

Now creativity and innovations are what makes inventions grow into diverse real-life application, thus, the art of stealing has been an effective method in actually stealing inventions by understanding how they work and what is making them work and then creatively using that knowledge to make an improved idea or product to serve the same goal as the invention, but in a better way, or to do something different.

The same too goes for innovation.

So for example, Michael Faraday Invented Electricity, and as a result of this, Thomas Edison invented the Electric Bulb, which is an innovation of Electricity (an application of Electricity), and now we have several companies like Tesla and the rest producing Electric cars, which without the original Invention of Electricity by Michael Faraday, it wouldn't have been possible.

Conclusion

Innovation and Creativity are something that from the very beginning have moved from one level to another, with each one being an improved version of the older one. Thus, we engage in the art of stealing to take that which has existed or is presently existing and we improve on it or diversify its uses.

So next time you want to get creative or innovative, pick up an old or an existing project, look at it closely, understand the function it performs and see if there is anything you can add to it or something you can change that will make it perform that same thing faster and better, and you will be surprised how creative and innovative you can be.