The sustainability of research-based innovations in schools is constrained not only by systemic institutional barriers and inherent contradictions between schooling and research, but also by the related issue of time. This case study suggests that relative timescales, e.g., the collective activity of schooling over decades versus the individual actions of researchers over semesters or years, hinder the coordination and synchronization of schooling and research processes. Using cultural-historical activity theory and heterochrony, this analysis of data from a 4-year collaborative school-university research and development project suggests that, in spite of active support from school personnel, temporal conflicts undermined research activity and the sustainability of the innovation. At the same time, when researchers aligned their actions with the actions and timescales of school personnel, core elements of the innovation were appropriated into school practice.