Trevor Elben

Best personal “aha” moment in Project Mercury?

I think my biggest aha was how important training like this is, most of us aren’t natural entrepreneurs and shouldn’t be expected to be. We can all have great ideas, but raising those baby ideas into productive adults isn’t easy.

Best team “aha” moment in Project Mercury?

That we had more power and access to decision makers than we thought, just on our team, we had multiple short vectors to many high level AF officials. You would be amazed at how many “2-call” opportunities you have access to if you only look.

What tool do you use the most from Project Mercury?

I’m going to get a little meta here and say “the mindset”. Each tool is useful, when called for, but the mindset is something you can apply to pretty much everything.

What other innovation books or programs would you recommend?

My book list is always growing, but one I would suggest would be the Phoenix Project, it is not specifically innovation (its the story of how DevOps became a thing) but the importance of understanding systems and iteration. As for training I suggest Scrum training, and ThinkWrong, as both provide a myriad of useful tools.

Dream job:

Anywhere I can share my experiences for the betterment of those around me, learn and have fun(I know… cheesy right?)

Advice to the next cohort:

Don’t self filter, it’s easy to fall back to how you have always done it or kill the “off the wall” ideas because “they aren’t obviously feasible” but this is a space for you to swing for the fences. You will learn that what you thought possible is a self imposed constraint and how to learn quickly what works and doesn’t. Also network…. network with all the amazing people you meet in PM and beyond because you aren’t in the fight alone.