1 What you’re doing

One central question, answered with real evidence — not a summary of history.

The Innovations Scavenger Hunt uses the Field Guide’s timeline of 70+ Black inventors as a lens for exploring your own neighborhood. You’re not writing a report about the past. You’re auditing the present, using the past as your starting point.

Every hunt is organized around one four-part question:

1. Where can you find past inventions throughout your community?
2. What problems did they solve — and are they still solving that problem?
3. What challenges arise if this invention no longer serves as a solution, and how does it positively or negatively impact your community?
4. How can this invention be improved to address the issues or challenges it’s causing now?

This is an audit, not a guess. A finding has to be something you actually saw, checked, or were told — not something you assumed. This project builds a real, honest record.

2 Your materials

Four tools, four jobs — know which one you’re reaching for.

3 Who’s involved

This starts as one researcher, working alone — and can grow from there.

4 Set up your hunt

Four steps before you research your first inventor.

1. Enroll and unlock your Student Dashboard, free Skills Self-Assessment, and digital Field Guide.
2. Complete your Skills Self-Assessment — see your own starting capability before you research anyone else’s.
3. Choose your Socio-Economic Condition (SECC) anchor — the one real community condition your whole hunt points back to.
4. Pick your first era and inventor. You don’t have to start at Era 1 — pick whichever one speaks to you first.

5 The Field Guide

Six eras, from Pre-Ancient Egyptian Times to today.

You already have skills like theirs. Every inventor is tagged with the same six skill areas your Skills Self-Assessment covers. A “Have/Use” result isn’t just a number — it’s the same kind of thinking these inventors used to solve a real problem.

6 The Discovery Trail pathway

Six steps, from anchor to presentation.

1. Anchor
2. Research
3. Map & Audit
4. Design
5. Market
6. Present

This maps to a 16-week course calendar but can be compressed or extended for any grade band or timeline — including a single-session classroom version (see Section 18).

7 Your SECC Anchor

Pick one real community condition. Every stop points back to it.

A Socio-Economic Condition (SECC) is a real, named condition affecting your community — Aging Infrastructure, Unequal Access to Opportunity, Workforce Displacement, and nine others. The most common mistake is skipping straight to “find an invention” without anchoring the whole hunt around one condition first.

A missing answer is itself a finding. If you can’t find who owns or maintains something related to your SECC, that absence is exactly what an Upgrade or Add Opportunity looks like — write it down.

8 The Research & Audit Log

One log per stop. Ten sections, all in one place.

Every stop you audit gets logged the same way, start to finish:

9 Confirmed Working or Upgrade Opportunity

Two possible findings. Choose the one your evidence actually supports.

✅ Confirmed Working
↑ Upgrade or Add Opportunity

Confirmed Working means the modern version is already here and already helping. Upgrade or Add Opportunity means it’s outdated, missing, or could be improved. Both are equally valid, useful findings — this isn’t a pass/fail grade on the invention.

10 Follow the money

Six questions that tell you who actually has power over what you found.

Ask, in order: Who owns it? Who requested it? Who approved it? Who paid for it? Who installed it? Who maintains it?

“I couldn’t find out” is a real, honest answer to any of these — write that instead of guessing. Not knowing who approves something is itself a finding.

11 The Strategist Mindset

Why, What, How — turning facts into real understanding.

• Why does this invention exist in this location specifically?
• What does the current use of this invention tell you about who holds the power to change it?
• How would you go about improving or changing the invention and its use?

These three questions turn your Stakeholder Roles answers into a real argument — not just a list of names.

12 Skills, industries & job matching

Every invention connects to a real, current job. Prove it.

Name the specific skill, industry, and job opportunity involved — then paste a real job description from a job board (LinkedIn, Indeed, O*NET, Monster, Glassdoor) that represents it today. Then check it against your own Skills Self-Assessment: do you already have some of what that job requires?

13 Sourcing & evidence

If you didn’t write it yourself, it’s a source — not your own words.

Anything copy-pasted from the internet gets logged as a separate source: title, link, and type. This applies to your audit findings, your improvement research, and your Stakeholder Roles answers alike. Sources are checked for duplicates against the knowledge base before being added.

14 Proposing a new inventor

Know someone who isn’t in the Field Guide yet? Propose them.

Era 6 is explicitly still being written, and the other eras may have real gaps too. A proposed inventor can be historical, contemporary, or someone in your own family or community — but it always requires at least one source, and always goes through Legacy Council review before it’s added. Nothing gets published automatically.

15 Submitting your own innovation

Different from logging a stop — this is your own idea.

Your Research & Audit Log documents what already exists. An Innovation submission is your own original product, service, prototype, or idea for improving today’s version of an invention. You can keep it private — but a private idea can never be verified, since verification requires Legacy Council review. That trade-off is made explicit before you submit.

16 Growth Tiers & badges

Your progress, made visible.

Tier 1 — Scout
Tier 2 — Tracker
Tier 3 — Pathfinder
Tier 4 — Trailblazer

Era badges are earned by completing all research questions for that era — not just visiting one stop. Your Dashboard tracks both your tier and your badges together.

17 The stakes: two earnings pools

Real value, tracked two separate ways.

Pending accountant & compliance review. Research Royalty conversion (Shares, Cash, or a split) is not yet live for real transactions. Governed as a Program-Based Enterprise experience — NSYEP is the Compliance/Legal Coordinator, and any election requires Parent/Guardian oversight and co-signature.

18 Play Dates & the Final Presentation

You don’t have to wait until the end to connect with other researchers.

Play Dates are smaller, monthly, casual meetups — researchers compare stops and swap tips, no pressure. The Final Presentation is the big one: presenting your findings, your original improvement idea, and how it helps your family, neighbors, and community — held during Black History Month, Juneteenth, or any time of year.

A teacher running a one-time classroom version can compress the whole loop into a single 75-minute session, ending with “The Hunted” — a peer swaps evidence with you and challenges your classification before it’s finalized.

19 A worked example

One full stop, start to finish.

Omari anchors his hunt on Aging Infrastructure and researches Elijah McCoy’s 1872 Improved Lubricator from Era 3. He locates a modern equivalent — a water/sewer maintenance access point on Oak St. — and classifies it Upgrade Opportunity, based on visible signs of age he photographed and captioned as evidence. He traces the ownership chain back to City Public Works, pastes a real maintenance-technician job description as his skills connection, and proposes a sensor-based monitoring upgrade as his own original idea — submitted for Legacy Council review.

Every piece of that chain — anchor, inventor, audit, evidence, skills match, original idea — is exactly what this guide has walked you through building, one section at a time.

20 Core principles

• This is an audit, not a guess. Every finding needs to be something you actually saw, checked, or were told.
• A missing answer is a real finding. “I couldn’t find out” is honest, not a failure.
• Sources are sources, not your own words. Anything copy-pasted gets logged separately.
• Nothing publishes automatically. Proposed inventors and innovations both go through real review.
• You already have skills like theirs. The Skills Self-Assessment exists to prove that, not just claim it.

21 Glossary