We built GrundMind to make AI work for people and businesses.
GrundMind is a Swiss-based AI value and adoption diagnostic and advisory company helping leaders understand where AI is creating value, where it is not, why, and what should change next.
We look beyond technology to examine the full system in which AI is introduced: the business priorities, workflows, decisions, responsibilities, capabilities, and people expected to use it.
Dr. Sanela Vellino
Founder of GrundMind and the Grund Institute
- PhD in Biomedicine
- Technology product leader
- Researcher and author
- Specialist in human-centred AI adoption
- Based in Switzerland
Dr. Sanela Vellino is a scientist, technology product leader, and researcher focused on the relationship between human cognition, organisational systems, and artificial intelligence.
She holds a PhD in Biomedicine and began her career in scientific research, where she was trained to question assumptions, examine complex systems, and distinguish evidence from appearance.
She later moved into technology and product leadership, working at the intersection of business, users, data, and complex digital products.
Across these environments, she repeatedly observed the same problem: organisations were treating AI adoption primarily as a technology rollout, while the human and organisational conditions determining its success remained largely unexamined.
GrundMind was founded to address that gap.
GrundMind grew out of the research programme of the Grund Institute, translating that work into a diagnostic and advisory approach for organisations.
Sanela developed the GrundMind framework to help organisations understand not only whether people are using AI, but how they are using it, where it improves work, where it introduces risk, and why the same tool can produce very different outcomes across individuals, roles, and teams.
Her work brings together scientific thinking, product strategy, cognitive psychology, organisational design, and practical experience implementing technology in complex business environments.
"AI does not enter an empty organisation. It enters existing workflows, existing decisions, existing incentives, and existing ways of thinking. Until we understand that system, we cannot expect AI to transform it."
AI adoption is moving faster than our understanding of its impact.
Organisations are investing heavily in AI, yet many are still struggling to demonstrate meaningful returns.
Employees are using more tools. Companies are launching more pilots. AI-generated output is increasing. But greater usage does not automatically create better decisions, stronger performance, or measurable business value.
The problem is rarely the technology alone.
AI is introduced into existing organisations with existing processes, incentives, responsibilities, habits, limitations, and ways of thinking. When these elements do not fit together, adoption creates friction instead of value.
GrundMind was created to help organisations see that friction clearly and redesign the conditions around AI before more money, time, and trust are lost.
Companies should not have to guess why AI is not delivering.
Cognition by design
GrundMind combines research, diagnostics, and practical business advisory to help organisations build a more deliberate approach to AI adoption.
Our work connects human cognition with organisational design. We examine how people understand, evaluate, verify, trust, and apply AI within real business workflows.
The goal is not simply to increase AI usage.
The goal is to ensure that AI supports the right work, improves measurable outcomes, strengthens human decision-making, and remains aligned with clear accountability.
GrundMind's diagnostic framework evaluates AI adoption across business value, workflows, cognitive fit, governance and risk, and role and capability fit, giving leaders a structured view of where value is being created, where it is leaking, and what must change next.
Business outcomes before AI activity
AI adoption should be measured through meaningful changes in performance, quality, speed, cost, risk, and decision-making.
People are part of the system
Organisations cannot improve adoption by focusing only on tools. Workflows, responsibilities, capabilities, incentives, and cognitive preferences must also be considered.
Cognitive diversity is an advantage
Different interaction styles can contribute different strengths when roles and AI-supported work are designed appropriately.
Human accountability must remain visible
AI may support reasoning and execution, but responsibility for consequential decisions must remain clear.
From experimental usage to responsible, measurable value.
Our mission is to help organisations move from experimental AI usage to responsible, measurable, and sustainable business value.
We want companies to understand their AI adoption system before attempting to scale it, identifying where AI genuinely improves work, where it creates friction or risk, which roles, workflows and support conditions are best suited to different forms of AI use, and what organisational changes are required for adoption to succeed.
Make AI value diagnosable before organisations scale what they cannot yet explain.
As AI increasingly becomes part of how people think, decide, create, and work, organisations will need more than technology access or usage statistics. They will need an evidence-backed way to see where value is being created, where it is leaking, how people and workflows experience AI, and which conditions should change first.
Cognitive Fit remains one of the dimensions organisations have historically failed to measure. GrundMind places it inside the wider operating system of value, workflow, governance and role design.
AI value should not depend on guesswork.
Discover what is enabling or preventing measurable AI value across your organisation.