Business Models in the Education Technology Industry: What Makes Them Successful?

This study focuses on business models of education technology firms (i.e., technology providers that enable service innovation in higher education). The purpose of this research is to analyze which choices in business models (concerning customer identification, value delivery, financial aspects and value proposition) foster firm performance—financially and in web and social media. We conduct a complete analysis of education technology firms targeting the higher education market (N = 407). We use databases (e.g., Crunchbase) and firms’ websites to retrieve relevant information in a standardized procedure. The empirical investigations show that most factors (e.g., support) responsible for business model success in the education technology industry are related to the firms’ services. This study is the first to systematically evaluate the business models of education technology firms and among the first studies to address the influence of business models on firm performance