The role of European networks and funding in the inter

Internationalization is generally an intense and dynamic phenomenon that requires huge resources to trigger itself and this is even more evident for International New Ventures because of the so-called liability of newness and liability of foreignness. A systematic review of the literature revealed that the main mechanism by which INVs try to deal with the lack of resources is the use of relational networks.This exploratory study seeks on the one hand to contribute to the literature on network theory in internationalization, focusing on one of the possible categorizations of networks - social and business networks - by interpreting and investigating the two-phase internationalization process (exploration and exploitation), from the point of view of the International New Ventures entrepreneurs; on the other hand, to fill a gap in the literature about the scarcity of studies on European funding and the lack of studies on these financing(or co-financing) instruments as a resource for internationalization.The results show that, INVs use personal networks during the exploration phase, business networks in the exploitation and European funding in both phases of the internationalization.