AU Project Mercury, as seen in the atch’d logo, metaphorically launches Airmen into orbit around our Air Force bureaucracy during their 90-day cohort period so they can innovate and incubate new concepts and technologies. Following the 90-day period, Airmen return from orbit to pitch their proofs of concept and transition the new concepts and technologies into the Air Force. The launch vehicle for AU Project Mercury is the Innovation Genome methodology created by Dr. Jeff DeGraff (Innovatrium and University of Michigan). The four colors (red, blue, yellow, green) in the logo are the color codes from the Innovation Genome and relate to how individuals and organization innovate (i.e., engineer/control, athlete/compete, sage/collaborate, artist/create). (Courtesy graphic)