"From an incremental improvement side, probably, but from a new product side, definitely not." What in the world are you talking about? Chlorination decreased

"From an incremental improvement side, probably, but from a new product side, definitely not." What in the world are you talking about? Chlorination decreased adult mortality by nearly 50%, and childhood mortality by nearly 75%. These sorts of public-health innovations are what gave us the ability to start pursuing those "new products" you value so highly. If that's incremental improvement to you, you need to re-examine your assumptions. The incentive here was saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people.