• Our Approach

    The right tool, in the right place, at the right time.
     
    Amplify Markets provides strategic advisory and implementation support to social enterprise and non-profit clients who wish to utilize market-based approaches to address social challenges. Our Lean Development model right-sizes developed world commercial best-practices for developing world environments. We approach each project like an entrepreneurial startup – focusing energy and attention on defining clear metrics for success, applying frameworks to test and optimize operational models, and pivoting quickly to new approaches in order to develop scalable and sustainable solutions.
     
    Amplify personnel are more than technical advisors, we are also implementation collaborators. This means that,once we help you develop a commercialization strategy or a market development model, we roll up our sleeves and join you in the implementation. For our non-profit clients, we find that this hands-on approach helps transfer knowledge and build capacity in field staff who may be exposed to market-based models for the first time. For social entrepreneurs, who often lack the resources to develop robust frameworks or hire full-time commercialization staff, in-field support from Amplify can be an appropriate solution.
     
    Our Lean Development approach is modeled on the Lean Startup methodology. Like the startup environment, development work operates in a resource-constrained atmosphere of great uncertainty. In these circumstances, it is important to learn quickly and conserve valuable resources, while maintaining enough rigor to identify and sustain a successful operational model. This is where our lean approach can help:
     
    • Think of projects and products as "experiments" - and create hypotheses to be tested in a scientific way.
    • Embrace failure - create a Minimum Viable Model, test in small batches, fail fast, modify, repeat.
    • Employ validated learning - applying the right kind and amount of measurement at the right time.
    • Leverage the 80/20 Principle - Eighty percent of outputs often result from twenty percent of inputs. We help our clients identify and focus on the appropriate twenty percent.

  • Our Services

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    Innovative Financing

    Amplify has a unique skill-set in the financing space. At one time or another, we have been entrepreneurs, investors and grantees ourselves. As a result, we are in an ideal position to help connect donors to market-based programs and impact investors to social entrepreneurs, while at the same time working with the recipients of these funds to maximize return on this investment. In the field, we have created innovative consumer financing programs that allow low-income households to access social products through finance and developed models that connect supply chains to bank or microfinance lending. To support these models, we often leverage funding from Kiva, who supports our in-country finance partners to make social-purpose loans.

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    Market Development

    As development work evolves, more organizations are finding the lines between charity and industry blurred. The delivery of health, social and environmental products and services to low-resource settings can often be done more efficiently and cost-effectively using market-based approaches alongside more traditional means. For many of our clients, this requires the ability to understand and engage with manufacturing, supply chains and distribution channels - approaches and capabilities we can help their organization develop and strengthen.
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    Social Enterprise

    Whether you're a global non-profit or a single inventor, building a successful social enterprise faces a set of challenges best addressed with a common framework. From our background in entrepreneurship and several years of supporting social enterprise in the field, we have created the Lean Development toolkit. We draw from this resource in our support of social enterprise clients, often working alongside them to build capacity in their staff, adapting tools to fit their unique environment and using lean approaches to rapidly test, refine and optimize products and business models.
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    Commercialization

    We help turn technology ideas into commercial success. The technology world is littered with failed products that solved a technical problem, while ignoring the needs and desires of the user. In a similar way, the development world is brimming with technical solutions that must find a path to commercial viability in order to have a lasting social impact. We help universities, entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations think through the economic, commercial and operational components of launching new social products and then work alongside them to make this vision a reality.

  • Our Story

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    After helping launch three start-ups in the U.S., Tim Elliott took a sabbatical in 2008 to join MBA’s without Borders as an adviser to PATH, where he worked in Asia supporting social enterprises in the water and sanitation space. This posting introduced him to the tremendous contribution the market can make in solving social problems, and at the same time highlighted the need for more commercial experts to join traditional non-profits and social enterprises seeking to develop market-based solutions.
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    Tim turned his sabbatical into a full-time position with PATH, where he built and led a team of commercial advisers tasked with developing markets for consumer health products and creating innovative financing programs in Asia and Africa. He launched Amplify Markets with members of this team, whose collective experience includes the successful commercialization, introduction and financing of 13 products, by 21 field partners, in 7 countries.
     
    You can read more about his journey from the mainstream to upstream in Bloomberg Businessweek and The Wall Street Journal.
  • Contact Us

    We would be happy to field any inquires or comments that you may have