The internationalisation of vocational education and training (VET) is now almost a necessity in a world with global labour markets, where employees, employers and other actors have to deal with constant and rapid changes. Flexibilisation, digitalisation and the emergence of new occupations and markets require ongoing adaptations of training provision to changing demand. VET is increasingly playing a role, e.g. by combining academic education and vocational training to develop labour market relevant skills and competences (OECD, 2015). Both followed by further training in that field, vocational training can contribute to a country's competitiveness (ibid.).

In this context, the German dual approach of vocational education and training enjoys great recognition worldwide, as it contributes to economic development to a particular degree (OECD, 2010). For this reason, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany (BMBF) supports projects that pursue the goal of internationalising VET (BMBF, 2016).

Pilz et al. (2020) show different internationalisation strategies of VET providers depending on their organisational orientation and, though that, their objectives related to the target market. The study describes the strategies based on the closeness or distance towards both the dual model and the target market (ibid.), the transfer processes are not within the scope of the research. However, the transfer of VET is a major challenge that is not easy to overcome, neither at the system level nor at the level of individual VET-related services (Wiemann et al., 2019; Posselt et al., 2019).

The transfer of VET services is particularly feasible, where few government structures make this transfer particularly challenging. In many countries, this means the market of VET is rather unregulated, which, however, also requires the positioning of education service providers from an economic perspective. Vocational training as a product is difficult to address, and if it is, then with strong local business partners who primarily aim to meet their own needs (Kühn, Peters & Holle, 2020).

The possibilities for VET providers to approach a new market are manifold. A common feature here is the development of a business model that is oriented to their own resources on the one hand and to the requirements of the market on the other hand (for example, see (Bullinger & Scheer, 2003; Leimeister, 2020; Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2013). Systematic development increases the probability of success of business models and of their VET service providers. At the same time, it represents a major challenge, especially in an international context. The development of a sustainable business model represents an important criterion for success in the aforementioned BMBF funding. This funding consists mainly of two funding guidelines, namely "Berufsbildungsexport [Export of VET] (BEX, 2010-2017)" and "Internationalisierung der Berufsbildung [Internationalisation of VET] (IBB, 2016, ongoing)". To a certain extent, the same actors were and are active in both funding lines. This offers the opportunity to examine the learning processes and effects in the course of VET transfer more closely and in this way to contribute to VET-related service research as a relatively new research field.

This work aims to analyse the processes of business model development and adaptation by VET service providers and wants to crystallise the lessons learned by the actors. Lessons learned are widely understood as knowledge stocks that emerge from the reflection of activities. In this context, lessons learnt are defined as "findings, knowledge or experiences that have emerged and are documented during project implementation" (Dechange, 2020). The basic questions of this paper are thus: What are the lessons learned by actors who were active in both funding guidelines? Are there adaptation processes and how can these be described?

To answer the research questions, nine funded projects were selected in which at least one project partner was active in both funding guidelines. The analysis targets to identify and systematise changes in the procedure in the direct comparison of planning and implementation in the first funding round to planning in the second funding round. Subsequently, a documents analysis based on the approach of organisational research (Schmid, 2017) was carried out, as the documents refer to organisations in two perspectives: Firstly, the projects occupy a special position in the participating companies, which requires an organisation that differs from the core processes in other work areas of the company. Secondly, the projects themselves represent a unique organisational form that claim specific demands on the actors. Planning and reporting documents from different points in time of the project's progress (BEX) were involved. The analysis was conducted deductively and the category system was supplemented inductively. The deductive categories were derived from the processes of business model development (Leimeister, 2020) and business model design (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2013). Additional categories were used to capture the work processes and structures within the network in order to cover all areas of possible lessons learned. Project documents have a limited informative value, as they represent reporting documents to clients and thus only reflect changes authentically to a limited extent. In order to counter this limitation and to make implicit existing knowledge and experience reflexively accessible, nine qualitative interviews were conducted with the project actors following the document analysis. The aim was to validate and supplement the results of the document analysis. The interviews lasted about 90-120 minutes. The guideline used was based on the evaluation categories of the document analysis. The recorded interviews were conducted via telephone or zoom (digital conference tool) from August to October 2020.

The study aimed to identify lessons learned of VET service providers in international contexts regarding the development (Leimeister, 2020) and design (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2013) of business models. Regarding the first, an exemplary result is that the target descriptions within the project documents include more goal dimensions in most cases (micro-, meso- and macro-level of transfer goals), while projects with already holistic goal definition remain at that level. A small number of projects did not change the level of goal descriptions. These results suggest three possible lessons learned: First, the ability of the actors to orient their proposals in the requirements of the funding guideline improved. Second, the projects learned that a pure export does not fit the targets of the VET providers’ work entirely. Third, the goal perspective in BEX worked well and adaptions did not seem necessary towards IBB. A second result refers to the different dimensions of the transfer process of developed VET services. Here, the projects seem to reduce especially the complexity of the strategy to enter markets in different dimensions. While in BEX e.g. most projects follow a diversification or differentiation strategy providing a number of offers in a target country, the same actors reduce these efforts in IBB following a focusing strategy. This appears comprehensible, since the actors enter a new area and try to identify a market fit according to their own competences. This again represents the starting point for possible subsequent differentiation efforts. A complementary composition of the project teams appears helpful during that step. Other reductions e.g. relate to geographical or cultural aspects. The findings of this study reflect the current practice of German VET providers in international markets represented by a very small sample. The limitations and research desiderata will be discussed within the long paper.

Bullinger, H.-J. & Scheer, A.-W. (2003). Service Engineering – Ein Rahmenkonzept für die systematische Entwicklung von Dienstleistungen. In H.-J. Bullinger & A.-W. Scheer (Hg.), Service Engineering. Entwicklung und Gestaltung innovativer Dienstleistungen [Service Engineering. Development and Design of Innovative Services] (S. 51–82), Berlin: Springer Gabler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-09871-4 Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) (2017). BMBF-Bekanntmachung zur Förderung der Internationalisierung der Berufsbildung [BMBF Announcement for the Promotion of the Internationalisation of Vocational Education and Training]. URL: https://www.berufsbildung-international.de/de/foerderung-bekanntmachungen-und-ausschreibungen-bmbf-bekanntmachung.html [29.04.2020]. Dechange, A. (2020). Projektmanagement schnell erfasst [Project Management Quickly Grasped]. Berlin: Springer Gabler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-57667-0 Kühn, I. K., Peters, S., & Holle, L. (2020). Internationalisation strategies of German VET providers. What is important for business models in new markets? In C. Nägele, B. E. Stalder, & N. Kersh (Eds.), Trends in vocational education and training research, Vol. III. Proceedings of the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Vocational Education and Training Network (VETNET) (pp. 168–177). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4006667 Leimeister, J. M. (2020). Dienstleistungsengineering und –management. Data-driven Service Innovation [Service Engineering and Management. Data-driven Service Innovation], 2. Ed., Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Gabler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-59858-0 OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2010). Learning for jobs: OECD reviews of vocational education and training. OECD, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/20777736 OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2015). Education Policy Outlook 2015. Making Reforms Happen. https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264225442-en Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2013). Business model generation. A handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers (1. Ed.). Wiley. Pilz, M. & Wiemann, K. (2020). Does Dual Training Make the World Go Round? Training Models in German Companies in China, India and Mexico. Vocations and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-020-09255-z Posselt, T.; Abdelkafi, N.; Radić, M. & Preissler, A. (2019). Berufsbildungsexport. Zentrale Bausteine der Geschäftsmodellentwicklung. In M. Gessler, M. Fuchs & M. Pilz (Hrsg.), Konzepte und Wirkungen des Transfers Dualer Berufsausbildung [Concepts and Effects of the Transfer of Dual Vocational Training] (pp. 163–196). Springer Fachmedien VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-23185-9 Schmidt, U. (2017). Dokumentenanalyse in der Organisationsforschung. In: S. Liebig, W. Matiaske & S. Rosenbohm (Hrsg.), Handbuch empirische Organisationsforschung [Handbook of Empirical Organisational Research] (S. 443–466), Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-08493-6 Wiemann, K., Li, J., Wiemann, J., Fuchs, M., & Pilz, M. (2019). „Lost (in) VET“: Zum Stand der Transferforschung in der internationalen Berufsbildungszusammenarbeit aus Sicht verschiedener Wissenschaftsdisziplinen. In M. Gessler, M. Fuchs & M. Pilz (Hg.), Konzepte und Wirkungen des Transfers Dualer Berufsausbildung [Concepts and Effects of the Transfer of Dual Vocational Training] (pp. 13–58). Springer Fachmedien VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-23185-9