The interest in collaborative research projects between industry and academia is growing, but the understanding of knowledge creation and how work-integrated learning takes place between these arenas, requires further attention. A deeper understanding of collaborative research projects and the learning processes is needed since interactions between industry and academy show both complicated and complex patterns. The study is based on a qualitative, explorative approach. Seven company representatives were interviewed concerning their experiences of collaboration with the academy. The results shows that the company participants’ competence level is crucial concerning motivation and abilities to contribute to the collaborative results. The communication between the academics and the practitioners is mainly performed by top-down processes, which gives advantages in the learning process to practitioners with high academic knowledge. A model is presented showing possible ways to increase the learning process, from top-down processes to bottom-up, that will include all the participants regardless of competence. To attract academics and company partners in participating in collaborative projects, this paper shows that it is essential that the project management is knowledgeable about individual participants’ knowledge level and take this into account when jointly designing the project setup.