An idea that repeats existing work without adding anything

Committees see the same titles every year: attendance systems, e-commerce stores, chatbots for university admissions. These are not banned, but a proposal that repeats one with nothing new is easy to reject.

If your idea is common, make the difference explicit and real:

• A specific user group others ignore (small shops, visually impaired users, rural schools).
• A constraint others do not handle (offline use, low-end phones, a local language).
• An evaluation others did not do (tested with real users, measured on local data).

And never submit, or lightly edit, another team's proposal or code. Departments keep past projects and check new ones against them.