Calls are made by governments, university management, and industry to increase university–industry cooperation to find solutions for societal and economic problems that are too large and complex to be tackled within one sector alone. These actors want to stimulate knowledge development and learning in university – industry cooperation to achieve innovation and growth. Researchers are often expected to take charge for realizing these ideas but when it comes to everyday research and knowledge development, individuals may encounter barriers for doing this. In this paper, we present an empirical study of researchers’ view on university – industry cooperation. Our focus in the analysis, inspired by the Lewinian field theory, is on the hindering forces that might create barriers for cooperation from a researcher’s perspective. Contrary to the previously used approaches taken in force field analysis, we perform a qualitative study which might be better suited for this framework. In the literature on cooperation and collaboration, ‘orientation-related’ and ‘transaction-related’ barriers have been identified. In our analysis, we also find other hindering forces related to person-task fit, identity, career and resources. These barriers are found on the individual and societal level, in addition to the previous two categories that are on the organizational level.