2025 KMWorld Community Award: Dave Snowden

The KM Community Award recognizes an individual or individuals who have made a significant impact in the knowledge management community. The award recipient, selected by KMWorld, has demonstrated meaningful contributions to the common good of the KM and information industry through volunteerism, research, published works, and/or project management.

This year’s winner is Dave Snowden, someone whose work has fundamentally shaped how we think about complexity, organizations, and sensemaking.

In presenting the award, Kim Glover, TechnipFMC, summarized Dave Snowden’s illustrious career. Currently he is the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of The Cynefin Company and director of the Cynefin Centre, which continues decades of work at the intersection of complexity science, narrative, and organizational practice. He is the creator of the Cynefin framework, a decision-making and sensemaking framework that has influenced leaders in government, industry, healthcare, security, and beyond. He began his career at IBM, pioneering the use of storytelling and narrative to surface tacit knowledge and make sense of real organizational experience.

Glover added, “He is a lifelong learner and a born teacher. He chases truth and facts ravenously, resists easy or fashionable solutions, and insists that we look for root causes and approaches that actually move the needle. He has drawn on natural science, anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems to challenge lazy thinking and oversimplification in our field. Many of us have had the slightly disorienting, and ultimately liberating, experience of hearing Dave say, “It’s more complicated than that,” and then realizing he’s right.”

 Throughout his career, Dave Snowden has challenged knowledge managers to step back from looking at tools and processes to understand the why of KM, the nature of problems being faced, the context and human behavior patterns. Additionally, he is a regular keynote speaker at the KMWorld conference, along with other talks, workshops, and open conversations around the world.

He has never been shy about challenging the KM community, but he’s also consistently invested in it: provoking us, pushing us, and equipping us to do better work in a world that is undeniably complex.