Understanding knowledge disclosure of bioscientists: more than a question of contextual and organizational ambidexterity?

This paper focuses the extent to which university scientists integrate scientific excellence and industry relevance in their knowledge disclosure. Universities are increasingly expected to be entrepreneurial and to fulfill the traditional missions of teaching and research and to transfer the knowledge and commercialize it. The paper reports on four case studies that analyze practices of knowledge disclosure of university scientists in biotechnology research units. We relate those practices to the contextual ambidexterity of university scientists with the organizational ambidexterity of research units. We build on longitudinal empirical data, gathered between October 2005 and November 2008 at two research universities in the Netherlands and two in the United Kingdom