Using the results of an empirical study in the State of Sonora, Mexico, this paper reports on an attempt to identify trends and transformations that have taken place in the way knowledge transfer activities are organized and structured in higher education institutions and research centres. The research was designed to provide a characterization of organizational change that captures its complexity in different dimensions: corporate identity, new interface structures, new functions, new forms of human and financial resource management and intellectual property. To achieve this, information was collected and analysed from documentary sources and generated from a series of interviews with key personnel involved with science--industry linkages in the organizations studied. (Contains 6 tables, 5 figures, and 8 notes.)