David Snowden is the founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge.  He is work is in the area of naturalising sense-making, seeking to base social science research and practice in the natural science.  He is generally considered to be a pioneer in the application of complex adaptive systems theory to a range of social issues, and in the development of narrative as a research method.  Cognitive Edge is an independent organisation that manages an open source approach to consultancy method as well as software development and research.  His work extends across government and industry in a variety of fields including knowledge management, strategic planning, conflict resolution, weak signal detection, decision support and organisational development.

Snowden holds a variety of academic positions.  He is a visiting professor at the Universities of Canberra, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Pretoria and is a visiting fellow at Warwick University, Nanyang University, the Universita' Cattolica in Italy and the Singapore Management College.  He was Director of the EPSRC (UK) research programme on emergence in 2006 and was appointed to the NSF (US) review panel on complexity science research in 2007.  He is also on the editorial boards of several Knowledge Management journals and is an Editor in Chief for Emergence, Complexity and Organisation.

He previously worked for IBM where he was a Director of the Institution for Knowledge Management and founded the Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity.  He was selected by IBM as one of six “on-demand” thinkers for a world wide advertising campaign.  Prior to that he worked in a range of strategic and management roles in the service sector.  He has extensive international experience and has been engaged in a range of DARAP and other government funded research programmes in the field of counter terrorism.  He lives in the UK where he pursues the co-evolutionary passions of Welsh Rugby and Wagnerian Opera.