AbstractThis paper outlines some examples of current collaboration between universities and technologically sophisticated small companies in Britain. Based on the examples a descriptive model of university‐industry collaboration in the UK is presented. The model shows that interactions with small industries are often sequels to earlier ones and are essentially a part of the total university‐industry collaboration efforts. Very often the whole process of new efforts. Very often the whole process of new product emergence chain – research ideaprototype‐marketable product‐multiple applications‐general marketable version – is triggered off by initial interactions with small companies and small companies do play a very important role in the process of total technology transfer from university to industry. While flow of research results in a collaboration was on the whole well planned, the initial contact was prone to chance. A two‐stage search by the university, which can reduce the chance elemen