TTOS as hybrid organization: Strategies of integration and differentiation

In the last decades we are witnessing an increase in public-private partnerships that are built to strengthen innovation capabilities of regional systems through technology transfer and tackle issues that single organizations could not face on their own. Technology transfer offices (TTOs) may play a relevant role in such partnerships. Given that industry and university operate according to different logics that are in turn rooted in different cultural frames, interests, goals, and behaviors, intermediary organizations like TTOs base their activity on lowering the potential for misunderstandings and disagreements, as well as on building bridges of communication to improve the efficiency of their particular technology transfer activities. This work discusses technology transfer offices as brokers pursuing hybridization strategies based either on integration or differentiation. In particular, insights are drawn from literature on new organizational forms to debate hybridization strategies (i.e., differentiation and integration) in technology transfer partnerships.