Test-Ban Verification at the Intersection of Basic and Applied Science and Innovation

Innovation has often been described as a straightforward linear process from basic science to applied science to application and innovation. There are many well documented examples that actively demonstrate that the process of innovation is not linear but highly non linear. Steven Johnson in his book 'Where Good Ideas Come From-The Natural History of Innovation' compares innovation to the process of evolution. Interaction and communication form the basis of hubs of interacting complexity similar to the richness of natural life in the reefs of the world. More recently there has been a trend to divide the drivers of innovation into supply driven and demand driven. While there is some validity to this separation, in fact the interaction between supply driven and demand driven has led to to remarkable scientific breakthroughs. One has only to consider the public commitment to land a man on the moon representing a demand side. This demand in turn led to remarkable scientific breakthroughs in our underwtanding of the origin and evolution of the solar system.This started a revolution in Earth System Science. The Navy requirement to map the magnetic patterns on the sea floor was a demand driven process. And yet this need led to a remarkable part of the evidence for the concept of sea floor spreading. Test-Ban Treaty verification to monitor clandestine nuclear explosions was the demand that contibuted in a major way to the global network of seismic obseratories. This network has done a remarkable job of helping science to understand the mechanisms of spreading tectonic plate bundaries and colliding plate boundaries. The global network monitoring demand has led to the incredible maps of global earthquake distribution. Indeed demand driven and supply driven sides of innovation are of real significance when they interact with each other and when there is communication across the divide.