In this paper we aim to understand management’s perceptions of knowledge and competence development to inform the design of technology enhanced learning activities integrated in the workplace. Work-integrated learning can be viewed with the university lens on studies of formal education integrated in the workplace setting, but here we rather emphasize the conditions of the workplace as implications for design of successful e-learning initiatives. We conducted interviews with 15 manufacturing industries in Sweden and used qualitative content analysis approach to interpret the text data. Results show that companies describe a rich variation of work-integrated learning activities, but the step towards external collaboration with academia for co-production of knowledge is marginal. Also, broad-minded work for innovations is limited. This imply the need for well-planned design of richer collaborative acitivites between academia and organizations through use of media technology to encourage competence development.