I completely disagree with your sentiment and think that academia should focus on novel work rather than incremental improvements. Something novel may not be better than the existing techniques right now, but what's to say they won't be better in the future? When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, it was not better than candles because it was extremely expensive, fragile, lasted only briefly, and the light was very dim. But it was novel and with more improvements, beat the state-of-the-art.