To walk a path no knowledge of the existing is needed. But to be able to claim it is new it is. Even more so to be able to claim that the new is better.
Bias and ignorance are two different things. No knowledge is ignorance. Bias is using knowledge to judge new knowledge. The goal isn’t to pursue things with raging ignorance but to pursue them with no bias and collecting knowledge without conclusion, then once you’re knowledgeable of what is there you can take off with raging ignorance in the direction no one has gone before. But you can’t do than holding bias any more than you can having ignorance of what directions have been gone before.