The accelerating pace of intelligent technology presents two immediate truths:

1. Short-Term Pain: Teams and individuals are often drowning in administrative friction and outdated processes, making it impossible to keep pace.

2. Long-Term Potential: We now have the chance to buy back human time for genuine creativity, speculative design, and radical innovation.

Every organisation, from schools to theatres to charities, is facing the same challenge: how do we translate this incredible, fast-moving technology into practical, human-centred strategy?

We step in as your R&D Partner. We offer clarity, reducing immediate administrative friction while guiding your organisation toward a future of human thriving. We help you implement new, future-thinking workflows using the tools you already own (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Co-Pilot). We provide the time and space needed to explore, without the risk, at your own pace.

The Mangrove Difference: Human-Centred, Pragmatic R&D

Our core philosophy is built on human experience, common sense, and pragmatic application:

1. Designing for Neurodiversity, Better for Everyone

Our R&D began with a deep focus on creating an 'AI Chief of Staff' operating system for neurodivergent individuals, particularly those with ADHD. It’s a single portal into work and life that’s already changed the founder’s own life. This gives us a unique, powerful lens: by designing systems that minimise cognitive load, reduce administrative friction, and favour conversation-first workflows, we create highly efficient, clear systems that benefit all staff and increase organisational capacity.

2. Emergence, Coherence, and the Nature of Design

We are not a large digital transformation consultancy. We advocate for quick, lightweight improvements immediately, because we know how quickly the technology landscape is changing. Our goal is not to build brittle, top-down designed systems that will be outdated in six months.

The name Mangrove reflects our belief in naturally-inspired design: emergence and discovery over brittle top-down planning; coherence over compliance.

If everyone is struggling with data storage and naming conventions, if people are overwhelmed with admin—we see this as a design issue, never an individual failing. We seek to understand the systemic design flaws that cause frustration.

Challenge: How much are you doing today that has been done the exact same way for years, or even decades? Did you ever actually design how you work? Or is that just “how things are done”…do you have a nagging hunch that there must be a better way?

3. Human General Intelligence (HGI): The Vision for Adaptive Systems

Our work focuses on two intertwined goals: immediate pain reduction and long-term vision.

In the short term, our work focuses on fixing those deeply inefficient processes. By using intelligent systems, automation, and superior workflows (which includes AI, but is often just about optimising existing tools and processes that haven't been redesigned in decades) to handle the 'busy work'—we protect your most valuable resource: human time. AI is not just LLMs and chat bots, and this is also something we help you understand.

The Long Game: The Adaptive System

We view intelligent technology not just as an efficiency tool, but as a catalyst that frees up your Human General Intelligence (HGI) for its highest purpose: speculative design, playful exploration, and innovation.

This vision is anchored in our Canary Diagnostics work, where we are flipping the script on neurodiversity 'accommodations.' Mangrove was founded on a design challenge: What if 'ADHD' represented a valid cognitive style that has simply never been properly designed for? What if, rather than pathologising individuals for being disorganised, we understood how their brain wants to organise information and built systems that work with that?

We believe the most realistic future outcome of AI development is one where systems and tools adapt to us, rather than us adapting to them. Our ethos with EpochOS and Mangrove’s fellows programme is based around this:

• Understanding yourself, your own way of thinking and working.

• Developing systems and workflows that support you exactly as you are.

• The creation of a Portable Intelligence Document that describes you, allowing you to plug that into any new system so it can instantly adapt to your preferences.

This is a bold vision, one that is in active development today. We advocate for active engagement in the design of these new systems with human-centred urgency (see our full design ethos in this deck: Link to Design Ethos Slide Deck. Our perspective is expansive; after all, we're building systems to last (see our link to the 12,000 Year Human Almanac for perspective).

4. Safety, Privacy, and Ethics First

All our support is grounded in data privacy, common AI concerns, and human-centred design. We provide guidance on quick wins, low-risk applications, and leveraging low-cost or free tools, ensuring you move forward responsibly and ethically.

What We Do: Our Core Services for Orgs

(LINK to 1-1 and group workshops for individuals, ADHD/ND freelancers/entrepreneurs, one-offs, courses, office hours and more)

We offer flexible, structured engagements to meet you where you are:

1. Insight Sprints (Light / Medium)

Our initial step is always to understand your unique reality. We use lightweight one-off Q&A sessions and optional 1-to-1 interviews with key staff to rapidly map:

• The most friction-filled parts of current systems (bottlenecks and frustrations).

• The current "vibe" and concerns around AI use.

• Systems mapping of workflows that could be improved with existing tools.

2. Core Workshops & Systems Redesign (Medium)

These are focused, practical sessions designed for immediate impact:

• Open Q&A: Concerns and Opportunities: A highly interactive, conversational session designed to open up dialogue and address staff or parent concerns directly. This is usually where we start

• AI Efficiency & Admin Reduction: A practical workshop where we co-work with staff on applying AI tools to everyday tasks—from email management to better document systems—to free up hours of time instantly.

• AI Basics for Complete Beginners: A session focused on demystifying modern AI, its core concepts, and ethical considerations.

3. Strategic R&D Partnerships (Medium / Full)

For longer-term investment and impact, we co-develop your AI roadmap:

• Strategic AI Governance & Future Readiness Sprint: We work together to co-develop proactive, human-centred AI policies that don't just ensure safeguarding, data privacy, and ethical use, but also strategically guide staff on future-focused engagement with the technology.

• AI Chief of Staff Implementation: Designing full-scale automations and organisational triage systems for long-term organizational support.

Sector-Specific Value

Our cross-sector work with organisations like Big Issue, VSO International, Soho Theatre, and HPPC School means we see the common, top-level concerns and opportunities everywhere.

Education (Schools & Colleges)

AI is a vital topic spanning careers, safeguarding, and the future of education.

• Staff: AI skills are no longer optional—all staff will need them for future roles. We help teachers buy back time for planning and strategy.

• Pupils: They are at risk if they don't understand AI; at a disadvantage if they don't learn it for work. We address media literacy, generative AI, and appropriate use in educational contexts.

• Parents: They need to understand the technology for safeguarding, career guidance, and its relevance to their own work.

Charities and Publicly Funded Organisations

(e.g., Big Issue, VSO International)

• Urgency: You operate under immense resource pressure. We focus on low-risk, immediate wins that maximise impact by automating aspects of grant reporting, communication triage, and reducing manual administrative burden.

The Arts

(e.g., Soho Theatre)

• Focus: Protect and maximise creative focus. We reduce administrative overhead (marketing drafts, scheduling, finance support) to give artists and administrators more time for production and audience connection.

Corporates and Teams

• Efficiency: From better file systems and working with documents/spreadsheets to a full-on AI Chief of Staff. We support consistent application and upskilling using tools you already licence.

Neurodivergent Individuals (Within Teams or Freelancers)

• Empowerment: We develop personalised workflows and systems that use AI to reduce executive function load, minimise administrative burnout, and enable greater focus on core tasks.

Current R&D Partnership Opportunities

We are actively developing and looking for partners for specific workshops at a reduced rate while we complete our R&D phase:

• AI for Executive Assistants or other Admin Staff

• AI for Teachers (Workload Reduction and Planning)

• AI and Neurodiversity in Education and Workplace Settings

• AI Q&A / Basics for Parents

We are keen to discuss a specific workshop designed for your workplace, or to explore our common offerings. Contact us today to schedule a brief discussion and map out your next AI steps.