Story in development - little fish in big ponds

Am currently researching an idea looking at the interactions between small Australian start-up technology developers and big business and government departments. Many small companies talk about the benefit of having a decent-sized reference client, but find these companies constantly have the bar raised too high for smaller companies to qualify as suppliers. For the big companies, smaller suppliers represent higher risk, in terms of the immaturity of their technology and their greater likelihood of going bankrupt. If anyone knows however of a situation where a big company and a small local tech developer have come together on a reasonably critical project, please let me know ....