Dave Snowden

David John Snowden is a management consultant and researcher in the field of knowledge management. He is known for the development of the Cynefin framework, a decision-making tool.

He set up IBM Global Services’ Knowledge and Differentiation Programme. While at IBM he researched the importance of storytelling within organizations, particularly in relation to expressing tacit knowledge.

He has been European director of the company’s Institute for Knowledge Management and founded the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity. During this period he led a team that developed the Cynefin framework. He now is the founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge, a Singapore-based management-consulting firm specializing in complexity and sensemaking. His work covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making. He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory.