Dave Snowden currently divides his time between two primary roles: founder and Chief Scientific Officer of The Cynefin Company and the founder and Director of the non-profit Cynefin Centre, including consulting to major clients.

His work is international in nature and covers government, civil society and industry looking at complex issues relating to organising, strategy and decision-making in complexity. He is the creator of the Cynefin Framework and originated the design of SenseMaker®, the world’s first distributed ethnography tool.

Dave brings extensive experience in leadership, strategy and decision-making to his teaching and consulting interventions, developed through his experience as an operational leader as well as subsequent consulting expertise.

Early and pre-Cynefin Co Leadership history

Prior to founding the Cynefin Co, Dave held a number of strategic and leadership roles, including:

•After taking on a range of strategic and management roles in Data Sciences Ltd from 1984 until January 1997, Data Sciences was acquired by IBM.

•During his years at IBM, Snowden worked on a number of strategic consulting projects, set up IBM Global Services’ Knowledge and Differentiation Programme in 1997 and in 2000 became European director of the company's Institute for Knowledge Management.

•In 2002 Snowden founded the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity and began the development of the Cynefin.

•In 2004, Snowden left IBM in 2004 and founded Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd, a management-consulting firm based in Singapore.

Consulting and client work

Dave works closely with senior leadership at major blue-chip organisations, working in partnership with CEOS and including collaborations with leading names in the leadership world.

Senior leadership development programme examples

•Bradford and Bingley - immersive leadership development programmes

•Tesco - senior leadership development intervention

•Chanel international - leadership development with Clayton Christianson

•IBM - top 300 programme working direct to Lou Gerstner

•Australian Defence Academy – strategic leadership education

Integrated Strategy and Exec consulting

Dave’s work lends itself to a wide variety of strategic, decision-making and direction-setting contexts, working with leaders and managers to improve their complex strategy and decision-making. Key clients include…

•Bosch Europe executives - IT strategy

•Virgin Group - integrated strategy consulting

•Stock Exchange London - integrated strategy

•AstraZeneca - leadership development, digital agility and lifelong learning

•Novartis – strategic KM innovation and organisational change

•Westpack Bank - culture change, service improvement, customer retention

•Standard Chartered Bank South Africa - strategy

•ABSA Bank South Africa - multiple strategy projects

•SmithKline-Beecham - consulting directly to CEO post-merger

•BP (British Petroleum) - use and abuse of AI in oil discovery

•Nexen Canada - multiple strategy and leadership projects

•NatWest Bank Head Quarters - employee engagement

•Government Investment Ministry Colombia - regeneration of urban areas

•Latin American Development bank, Washington DC - strategy consulting

•World Bank and IMF – long term strategic adaptation

•Asian Development Bank – estuarine mapping and strategy   

Academic and Publications

Dave’s work is rooted in sound academic theory and research, and he has published extensively in both academic formats and resources designed for managers to use.

He has pioneered a science-based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems theory. Using natural science as a constraint on the understanding of social systems avoids many of the issues associated with inductive or case-based approaches to research.

Dave is a popular and passionate speaker and is well known for his pragmatic and iconoclastic style. As well as extensive guest lectures and keynote addresses, Dave has held various extraordinary or visiting professorships, including:

•University of Pretoria

•Stellenbosch University

•University of Hull

•Bangor University

•Hong Kong Polytechnic University

•Canberra University

•University of Warwick

•The University of Surrey

For a full list of publications please see https://cynefin.io/wiki/Publications_by_Dave_Snowden

Research & publication highlights include…

•Lead author of Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis: A field guide for decision-makers, a shared effort between the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, and the Cynefin Centre. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC123629

•Dave’s seminal HBR article with Boone on Leadership was the cover article for the Harvard Business Review in November 2007 and won the Academy of Management award for the best practitioner paper in the same year. https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making

•Dave has won a special award from the Academy of Management for originality in his work on knowledge management.

•Editorial board member of several academic and practitioner journals in the field of knowledge management, including Editor in Chief of E:CO; 2006 Director of the EPSRC (UK) research programme on emergence; and 2007 NSF (US) review panel on complexity science research.