Dave Snowden

David John Snowden (born 1954) is a Welsh management consultant and researcher in the field of knowledge management. Known for the development of the Cynefin framework,[1] Snowden is the founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge, a Singapore-based management-consulting firm specializing in complexity and sensemaking.[2] Contents 1 Education 2 Career 3 Works 4 References 5 External links Education[edit] Snowden graduated in 1975 with a BA (Hons) in philosophy from County College, University of Lancaster,[3] and obtained an MBA in 1985 from Middlesex Polytechnic.[4] Career[edit] Snowden worked for Data Sciences Ltd from 1984 until January 1997.[4] The company was acquired by IBM in 1996.[5] The following year Snowden set up IBM Global Services's Knowledge and Differentiation Programme.[6] While at IBM Snowden researched the importance of storytelling within organizations, particularly in relation to expressing tacit knowledge.[7][8][9] In 2000 he became European director of the company's Institute for Knowledge Management,[4] and in 2002 he founded the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity.[10] During this period he led a team that developed the Cynefin framework, a decision-making tool.[11][12][13] Snowden left IBM in 2004 and a year later founded Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd, a management-consulting firm based in Singapore.[14] As of 2016 he is an associate professor extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch Business School,[15] and an honorary professor in the school of psychology at Bangor University.[16] Works[edit] Snowden is the author of several articles and book chapters on the Cynefin framework, the development of narrative as a research method, and the role of complexity in sensemaking.[2] In 2008 he and co-author Mary E. Boone won an "Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in OB" award from the Academy of Management's Organizational Behavior division for a Harvard Business Review article on Cynefin.[17][18] In 2008–2009 he wrote a column for KMWorld on trends in technology, "Everything is fragmented".[19] He is an editor-in-chief of the journal Emergence: Complexity and Organization.[20]