The ability to access external expertise is crucial to small firms’ development, yet research examining the purchasing process of expert services by small firms is scarce. External expertise is defined here as knowledge or competence, that is relatively rare to the client firm, provided by an external party. Hence, external expertise includes professional business services as well as business advice. The paper reports on a qualitative study of small manufacturing firms’ behaviour in accessing external expertise. Five distinct patterns by which small firms come to use external expertise are described, demonstrating how small firms’ actions differ from the expert service purchasing process. The firms are found to acquire expert resources opportunistically and reactively as well as by calculated or routine purchasing, and by utilising informal sources of expertise.
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