I use other people’s ideas all the time. I quote them, link to them and name the person who prompted the thought. If I have adapted a model, I say so. If something has shaped my thinking, I try to make that visible.

Not because every idea needs a footnote, but because people should be able to tell what’s mine and what I’ve borrowed.

All my most useful thinking is built on earlier work, and I’m happy to declare it – there’s nothing wrong with that. When influence is presented as invention and familiar ideas return with a new acronym, a polished graphic and no visible history; that’s when I have a problem and once I notice that, I read everything else differently.

The argument is probably still sound, and the idea useful. But trust has gone, and trust is difficult to rebuild.

In an age when polished material can be produced in seconds, provenance matters more, not less.

So name your sources, acknowledge the thinking that came before yours, and make your own contribution clear.

That doesn’t weaken your work; it’s part of what makes the work yours.