I agree -> even if someone spends their time "rediscovering" an existing solution, I think that the learning experience of coming up with a solution without starting from current best solution is really valuable. Maybe that person doesn't reach the local maximum on that project, but having a really good learning experience maybe enables them to reach a global maximum on one of their next projects.

If I want some novel ideas from a group of people, I'm going to give them the framework of the problem, split them into groups so that they don't bias each other, and say: go figure it out.