Harris and colleagues relocate transdisciplinarity from a rhetoric of integration to a field of persistent institutional and interpersonal tensions. Their review draws on institutional logics to show that collaborative research is shaped by competing values: academic publication, societal impact, professional practice, commercial objectives, policy expectations and public legitimacy do not automatically align. The methodological significance lies in refusing the assumption that successful transdisciplinarity eliminates conflict. Instead, the ability to recognise, negotiate and work through tensions becomes a core competence. Soft skills, relationship-building, facilitation and long-term collaborative capacity are treated as structural elements of research rather than supplementary qualities. The paper’s iconic move is therefore to interpret friction as constitutive rather than accidental. This produces a bridge between sustainability science and organisational theory: transdisciplinary projects become arenas in which different institutional logics are temporarily assembled, negotiated and sometimes transformed. The field advances when these tensions are made explicit enough to become objects of collective work.