Micro-foundations of knowledge transfer: an interactional approach to innovation in boundary organizations.

This dissertation explores how social interactions within specific boundary organizations (BOs) included in universities’ Third Mission: Knowledge Transfer Offices (KTOs) impact the knowledge shared with society. While new activities and unseen actors continuously shape how universities contribute to society, theorists continue to collect missing pieces to the puzzle of universities’ impact on society, neglecting the relational aspect. This dissertation adopts a relational approach to knowledge transfer and examines three projects undertaken by the KTO of a top-ranked European university. The first longitudinal case study takes a longer-term view. It offers a contextualized analysis of the interactions that shaped the creation and implementation of the university makerspace, run by the KTO. It shows how materiality hinders and facilitates decision-making that potentially impacts the innovation developed inside that space. The second exploratory case study of a digitalized hackathon adopts a micro approach following the creation and development of nine digital objects actors use to engage and sustain collaboration during a hackathon. This study shows how the objects acted as a system and how their form, content, and medium changed through the process and according to the different functions they pursued. It portrays a dynamic view of material objects as carriers of knowledge and situational traces that ultimately shaped the innovative output of the project. The third case study takes a fine-grained approach, combining video-ethnography, conversation analysis, and micro-sociology to trace the second-by-second interactions unfolding in a meeting where a project takes an unexpected turn. The findings highlight a micro-interactional process of creative re-framing that we label ‘emotional scaffolding’ by which team members build a positive emotional mood while connecting existing and new ideas into a new solution. Finally, this thesis discusses the contributions to innovation management beyond traditional university knowledge transfer approaches and the scholarship unpacking situated interactions.