The international attractiveness of dual VET creates a scope of action for education service providers from the German VET sector. As an support for the sector to internationalize its activities, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) created several funding lines, which have been presented in further research (see e.g., Kühn & Greppmair, 2021; Peters & Krichewsky-Wegener, 2021; Siemer & Gessler, 2021).

In the former funding line "Vocational Training Export” (BEX, 2010 - 2017), the projects’ funding focus was on development of business models, which represented an important part of the output of the funding line. The recent funding line “Internationalization of Vocational Education” (IBB, ongoing since 2017) targets in one of three scopes the “demand oriented development and model implementation of education and training services for international markets” (BMBF, 2017). Both funding lines focus on the development of business models of German vocational training service providers in an international context, with the internationalization of the funded organizations in both cases taking place via market development in a selected target country. The core of BEX was the development of business models by the project networks that could be applied across sectors. The goal was, in addition to the creation of actionable knowledge, the financial sustainability of the resulting business models in the target countries (BMBF, 2011). IBB, in addition to the development of viable business models for vocational education and training services in foreign markets, includes international vocational education and training cooperation (BMBF, 2017). Here, the transfer of VET services in an international context takes place on the basis of a business model that is developed for or adapted to the new market. Both aspects, the development and design of the business model as well as the development or adaptation of associated services, must therefore be taken into account when considering internationalization projects by German providers.

The current research picks up further results of the studies named above to examine the innovation content of the developed business models. Due to the fact, that there are project actors involved in both funding lines, this research compares the activities of those actors in order to answer the following research questions:

• What adjustments have been made with regard to the originally planned business model development and why?
• What can we learn about the innovation content of the developed business models?

The theoretical basis of this paper is the Business Model Canvas approach by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2013), the approach to mapping the business model environment by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2011), and the approach to internationalization through business model innovation by Rask (2014). All approaches will be presented more detailed in a full paper version.

To answer the first research question, the nine elements of the Business Model Canvas (BMC), such as key partners, key activities or key resources (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2013) are used. Unplanned adjustments to business models are usually based on changes in the environment. The approach of mapping the business model environment according to Osterwalder and Pigneur (2011) serves to identify and evaluate those changes, using four categories of key forces: Industrie forces, market forces, and macroeconomic forces, whereby these are in turn characterized on the basis of 18 external factors.

To answer the second research question, the theoretical model of Rask (2014) on internationalization through business model innovation is used. It introduces the four types domestic-based, import-based, export-based and semi-global business models, whereby locational aspects are also considered in the theoretical framework and bases on the BMC, among others.

The sample of the study consisted of a total of 14 projects (seven each in BEX and IBB). The data was accessable since this research is part of the scientific monitoring of the on-going funding line IBB. The sample was chosen based on two indicators: Firstly, at least one actor was active in both funding lines and secondly, the actor agreed to be contacted after the BEX funding. Participation in both funding lines enables the transfer of experiential knowledge that could actually be relevant for the practice of internationalization processes. Resulting from this selection approach, involved organisations are research institutions, commercial as well as non-commercial vocational training providers. To answer the research questions, two survey approaches were chosen, firstly a document and content analysis of existing project documents and secondly qualitative interviews with project participants. Our document analysis follows an established approach in organizational research (Schmidt, 2017). We used qualitative content analysis with a primarily text-immanent orientation of category-based analysis (Prior, 2008). For the qualitative content analysis, the method of structuring content analysis was chosen using a theory-guided inductive method of category formation according to Kuckartz (2014). A total of 50 documents from the funded projects (actively involved in both funding lines) were included. The qualitative survey was conducted within the framework of guided expert interviews (Meuser & Nagel, 2013), which were recorded and transcribed. The expert status of the interviewees is justified by the exclusivity of the activity in two different, consecutive funding lines. The interviews were also analyzed according to the developed category system, with a focus on deepening and validating rather than expanding the existing evaluation framework.

At this stage of research, preleminary results are presented. For the business model design, selected results are an increasing number of involved key partners increases from BEX to IBB, so that a sustainable implementation of the project is considered at an early stage. With regard to the key activities, it can be seen that the projects from BEX to IBB are predominantly focusing their activities or reducing complexity. At the same time, activities in the area of interculturality/cultural sensitivity are increasingly taken into account. In both funding lines, attendance at events for demonstration and customer acquisition purposes is shown to play an important role in shaping customer relationships. If we now look at the preliminary results, it becomes clear that in addition to the planned adjustments of the business models with respect to the context of the target country, there are also those that were not originally planned. The Corona pandemic represented the greatest unforeseen risk for all respondents. With regard to the business model innovations on the part of the BEX and IBB projects, we note that most projects from both funding lines are to be located in terms of the export-based and semi-global business models. Furthermore, the internationalization types of business model innovation in the context of vocational education and training might have to be rethought or supplemented by additional facets in the context of further research. These findings appear to be interesting not only for German VET service providers, but also for an international audience, as Peters (2021) states in an international context but also with special reference to Anglo-Saxon countries.

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