New research institute reveals real-world lessons from AI projects
Work AI specialist Glean has today announced the launch of the Work AI Institute, a first-of-its-kind research initiative dedicated to decoding what actually drives results when companies commit to operating with AI projects at the core of their businesses.
The Work AI Institute brings together leading researchers from Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Notre Dame, University College London, Emory, and UNC Charlotte to answer the pressing question: What’s really working with AI at work? The Institute blends academic rigor with real-world data, experimentation, and end user insights to help enterprises separate signals from noise and accelerate meaningful AI impact.
The institute’s first major publication, The AI Transformation 100, by Dr. Rebecca Hinds and Stanford professor Dr. Bob Sutton, turns the first-hand experience of more than 100 executives, technologists, and researchers into an evidence-backed blueprint that can help drive AI success. It captures the breakthroughs, missteps, and hard-earned lessons from the experts and global organizations who’ve already scaled AI, distilling them into 100 practical strategies companies can put to work right now.
Among the report’s findings are that AI doesn’t fix broken systems -- it amplifies whatever it touches, for better or worse, depending on where you aim it. AI can take on the grunt work, but if you automate the human craft and judgment, the work becomes hollow and alienating.
It also points out that AI leadership needs to come from the top. AI adoption spreads when leaders actively use the tools themselves, signaling that experimentation is safe and expected.
“Too many organizations are sprinting into AI without understanding the real barriers to making it useful,” says Bob Sutton, Stanford professor emeritus and co-author of the report. “Our goal with this research was to cut through the hype and identify what's actually working, or might work. The companies getting real results aren’t just plugging in better tools -- they’re rewiring how decisions get made, how people collaborate, and how work moves. AI becomes most powerful when it’s embedded in the often-messy, everyday machinery of how the organization really operates.”
At the same time, the company has unveiled Glean Enterprise Context, the most comprehensive foundation for AI in the enterprise, combining memory, connectors, indexes, both personal and enterprise graphs, and governance to power agents that can reason, adapt, and act with real understanding of how work gets done.
You can find out more on the Glean blog.
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