Knowledge transfer to the private sector as well as to society and the ways researchers contribute to the public good are a growing concern for researchers and university policymakers alike. In this regard, two disciplines offer great potential to learn about patterns and mechanisms, namely the biotechnology and health sciences. Both research disciplines play a critical role in helping to advance research, develop new treatments and therapies, and improve public health. To date, little is known about how health scientists leverage their expertise and resources to address the needs of the wider community, and how they foster collaboration and partnerships that can help drive social and economic change, compared to biotechnology scientists being in the spotlight of research for a longer time. To gain more insights about the different knowledge transfer processes in both fields, we analyze 30 qualitative interviews with university and science institute researchers, as well as knowledge transfer intermediaries. We apply an ecosystem perspective and systematically analyze the interaction of framework conditions as well as systemic conditions in both fields. While biotechnology knowledge transfer is primarily hindered by intra-layer conflicts within the framework conditions, we find that health scientists face significant inter-layer encounters between framework and systemic conditions. This results in different knowledge transfer forms as an outcome of each ecosystem. Biotechnology researchers engage more in a market-oriented approach whilst health scientists seem to prefer an integrated knowledge transfer model. Our findings can both help researchers to boost their knowledge transfer efforts and university policymakers to develop more effective policy measures. With this, our results show how to foster knowledge transfer in different fields.