That sounds more like a bizarre brag than anything else, a "we would have invented it if you hadn't" statement.
There's value in being unencumbered by the directions of others, but there's an even larger value in being able to understand the state of the field and your new work's place in it, even if your new work is just a spark of an idea.
Doing otherwise is wildly inefficient, like trying to place an order at a restaurant with no menus and a no modifications policy. Unless you need to do it yourself to truly learn (plenty of people learn better by doing than reading), I'd recommend a healthy practice of reading about the cutting edge and building/inventing, without restriction on either.
I hate to break it to you but irrespective of a pursuit for efficient progress in science, the majority of papers reinvent things unencumbered by an obligation to locate the work in a broader body - in every paper I've been on, citations are post-hoc. And everyone I know works the same way - build a thing suited to your needs, craft the sales pitch for the reviewers (including how you're different from competitors), sprinkle citations for good measure.
The majority of papers are also garbage that add nothing to scientific progress, and are just there to satisfy some departments publication or project deliverable quotas.
There's value in being unencumbered by the directions of others, but there's an even larger value in being able to understand the state of the field and your new work's place in it, even if your new work is just a spark of an idea.
Doing otherwise is wildly inefficient, like trying to place an order at a restaurant with no menus and a no modifications policy. Unless you need to do it yourself to truly learn (plenty of people learn better by doing than reading), I'd recommend a healthy practice of reading about the cutting edge and building/inventing, without restriction on either.