The paper compares and contrasts firms organizing R&D teams internally with those organizing R&D externally as they undertake new product innovation in fast moving technological contexts. Using carefully selected paired case study of contrasting firms, we examine how hierarchical control elements work alongside informal elements. We find that externally organized R&D teams adopt different hybrid mechanisms (mixing hierarchy and informality) when choosing and deploying teams, because they have opposing process logics to those used in internally organized teams. We note that in the context of fast moving technological environments - these opposing logics may force firms to avoid partial integration (that is mixing internal with external). We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of organizational design issues such as ambidexterity and modularity and capability development choices in young technology firms.