State of the art technological and massive studies in regular or mainstream science are however not considered incremental, as even a single such project or publication, while possibly not containing major original ideas, contains simultaneously numerous improvements and/or high to achieve excellence and precision.
On a large scale, Thomas Kuhn in his philosophy of science sees scientific progress in a rather uneven, discontinuous manner, where main steps are made in works and periods bringing a paradigm shift.
Incremental research is often pursued as it entails shorter time frame to completion (and publication).
Publication strategies like salami slicing (see least publishable unit) are often pursued in this direction.
Scientists typically achieve this by incremental contributions to established research directions.