As a completely unqualified laymen my initial question would be "If you don't reward novelty why would anyone focused on career building want to be novel?" Not

As a completely unqualified laymen my initial question would be "If you don't reward novelty why would anyone focused on career building want to be novel?" Not that I doubt academia has people who want to push the cutting edge forward (if anything that seems to be the only reason to go into academia vs. private industry usually) but if I was a fresh-faced PhD aspirant I'd want to take the most reliable route to getting my degree and treading ground someone else has already walked seems like a much safer way to do that than novel research if the reward at the end is the same. But maybe that's a good thing? I can't actually say a reason I think it'd be that terrible except for the profs doing novel research that would lose their some of their student workforce.