The emergence of a new mode of organising economic activities through different kinds of networks is an interesting and challenging phenomenon for organisational research, and calls for research approaches aiming at increasing our understanding of different aspects related to this phenomenon. The motives or driving forces that constitute the foundation for establishing inter-firm networks represent one such aspect. The purpose of this paper is to describe the different motives for co-operation in an inter-firm network in a more varied way, thus to be able to highlight the differences between them and pinpoint them to a specific actor. The results from this study hence indicate that actors' motives for participating in the studied network are very different. The motives detected here hence represent a variety spanning from short-term cost minimising and search for new and/or increased revenues, to more long-term motives to diversify and thereby reduce uncertainty. Ego-centred motives in terms of personal aspirations and preferences were in a similar way combined with more social needs for speaking partners and collaborators. The study hence indicates that although general and jointly shared motives for inter-firm network may be expressed in an unambiguous way (which it was in the case studied in this paper), individual and firm-specific motives and expectations may differ considerably.