FMO is the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank. We invest in over 85 countries, supporting jobs and income generation in order to improve people’s lives in the parts of the world where we can make the biggest difference. Our role extends beyond financing, as we help businesses innovate to operate and grow transparently in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.

Backed by our mission to empower entrepreneurs to build a better world, we are constantly looking at innovations which can add value to our clients. FMOx is an initiative of FMO through which we aim to scale impact through the peer-peer learning, knowledge transfer and network connection.

FMOxCELERATE is the first part of FMOx that endeavours to work hand in hand with our clients and partners to find digital and scalable ways through which our clients can identify innovative ways to accelerate the growth and development of their products and services.

The FMOxCELERATE process

We believe in learning by doing. Using the design thinking lens, we aim to work together with you to move your ideas to validated actions and define an implementation plan.

How will we do this? With the help of innovation experts, a three-step process has been designed to go through the different stages of design thinking.

1. The scan phase is focused on identifying the needs, wishes and challenges faced by our clients. During this phase, the goal is to collectively make sense of all the generated ideas, validate the identified challenges, needs and wishes and identify opportunities for design, testing and refining of the proposed solutions.
2. During the test phase, the team goes from multiple concepts to the first version of what they believe the business should be. This is done by undertaking quick experiments until they have a validated solution is found. The goal here is moving from a concept and idea to a validated solution.
3. Finally, the build phase is focused on developing a prototype of the first version of the solution that will be launched. Here, the goal is to refine the business case with an actual team and numbers and get everything ready to go live.