Pursuing multiple goals is difficult for organizations because goals can conflict with one another and some goals may not be seen as feasible or desirable to pursue. Whereas some academic institutions successfully contribute to both high quality research and industrial innovation, new collaborations often struggle to balance between these multiple goals. We study the process of establishing six university-industry research centers and explore how the academic partners pursued goals related to innovation in addition to the traditional goals of academic research. We found that during the initial phase of the collaboration the innovation-oriented goals were not prioritized, and the research organizations were bolstering their research-oriented goals. Increasing pressure from industry partners forced the research organizations to develop new hybrid practices that also incorporated innovation-oriented goals alongside the academic ones. By outlining how multiple goals were integrated to create hybrid innovation practices we provide novel theorizing on how university-industry collaborations are formed and we contribute to the literature on how organizations integrate multiple and partly contradictory goals.