How firms use coordination activities in university–industry collaboration: adjusting to or steering a research center?

University–industry collaboration (UIC) is an important source of knowledge and innovation for firms but is often challenging due to the partners’ different goals. Thus, formal research centers have become a key policy instrument to foster stronger UIC whereby strong mutual relationships are created. This study investigates the establishment of a university–industry research center to gain insights into the coordination activities the focal firms used to achieve their goals with UIC. We find that the firms with goals related to specific innovations and technology development took a more active role by using structured coordination activities in the preformation phase of the research center, whereas the firms with goals related to general knowledge development mainly coordinated through unstructured activities when the center began operations. We map the specific coordination activities used in UIC and theorize on how the partners’ different organizational goals influenced their use of these activities. Our findings have important implications for how activities in UIC, particularly in research centers, can be designed to strengthen the collaboration between universities and their firm partners to enhance knowledge development and innovation.