This chapter explores how university research groups (URG) deal with the requirements of their practices while facing gaps left by on the one hand discrepancies between discourse and actual science, technology and innovation (STI) instruments and, on the other, coordination problems amongst STI policy instruments as implemented through various programmes and governance levels. In so doing, we study cases of research groups in nanotechnologies and biomedical engineering in Colombia, where we conducted semi-structured interviews, stakeholder dialogues in the framework of participatory workshops and collected information about URG activities and strategies. The results show how such groups, and particularly their leaders and their home institutions, adapt to different STI policy discourse and instrument gaps to support their practices, while maneuvering through inconsistencies and incompatibilities characterizing them. Through this process, URG become active players in the construction of such STI policies by acting as ‘jugglers’ that articulate various STI policy contexts, instruments and discourses simultaneously, in their effort to continue working on their research activities. This work contributes to the understanding of the rationales and dynamics of STI policy implementation from a bottom up perspective, by looking at the actions and learnings and strategies of the involved players.