Growing through access to international markets is a must for many family businesses in today’s competitive world (Mensching et al., 2016; Stieg et al., 2017). Understanding how to grow in such markets, taking into account the typical features of family businesses, is a gap that academic research has yet to fill. The majority of studies is limited to see export as the most direct and pursuable way, neglecting challenges and opportunities of other entry modes. But other modes are not necessarily the ones we find encoded in international business books. There may also be new hybrid paths of internationalization resulting from a mix of existing ones. Identifying and then exploring them would help in understanding how family businesses can overcome barriers to internationalization by solving liabilities in terms of lack of resources, higher coordination complexities and information asymmetries as basis of the uncertainties encountered when operating in host markets (Hitt et al. 1997). However, there are many weapons at disposal of the family business for its development in foreign markets (Casillas et al., 2017). We shall try to identify some of them.
