Sustainability of Innovations

With the recent flow of funding to support instructional technology and interactive learning environments through the E-Rate, Technology Innovation Challenge Grants (TICG), Technology Literacy Grants, Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to use Technology (PT3) grants, and grants from various foundations, there is an increased emphasis on exploring the sustainability of these innovations once the grant funding has ended. The literature on institutionalization, scalability, and sustainability that is explored within this article goes back several decades, but in all cases, the innovation is considered to be sustained within an organization. Although institutions of higher education, educational consortia, and K-12 schools are organizations, grants cannot be considered as organizations. Hence, issues of bringing about systemic change, transforming traditional institutions into learning organizations, scaling the innovations, leveraging funds, forming new partnerships, and spawning new entities to support and sustain valued activities are areas that are ripe for further research.