This article explores the characteristics involved when higher education institutions (HEIs) engage in management training in smaller firms. Building on previous research on how smaller firms and small firm managers learn and how these learning characteristics relate to the dominating culture in HEIs, the article suggests a tentative framework within which HEI-based training of SME managers better could be understood and more effectively implemented. Founded on this framework, the article advocates dialogue as a main pedagogical strategy for designing HEI-based management training programmes; programmes that should also benefit from including consultants as a lubricating interface between the academic world and the smaller firms' world of practice. The implications drawn from this framework are illustrated by experiences from a pilot management-training programme for small business managers in northern Sweden. (Contains 6 figures.)