The part-time MBA for working Professionals in Holland - Organizational Complexity and the Future of Knowledge Management
Organizational Complexity and the Future of Knowledge Management

Speaker at University of Phoenix, The Netherlands: Dave Snowden.

Bio: Dave Snowden is Director of the newly formed IBM Cynefin Centre which focuses on using human networks to enable the emergence of new meaning in organizational complexity. He was formerly a Director in the Institute for Knowledge Management where he led the Institute's programs on complexity and narrative as well as taking geographic responsibility for the Institute's activities outside the Americas. One of the founders of organic knowledge management, he pioneered the use of story techniques as a means of knowledge disclosure and a key aspect of creating a knowledge strategy. His subsequent work has taken him into the integration of learning and knowledge using models derived from complexity science and the development of advanced techniques for the management of informal communities and the simulation of social networks. His work on narrative has continued to develop with highly original work on the use of archetypes for a variety of purposes, oral history as an alter-native to Intellectual Capital Management Systems and the integration of complexity and narrative models into advanced decision support tools for strategy formation, scenario planning, innovation, branding and cultural change/integration.

The success of this work had led to the creation of The Cynefin Centre, membership of which is open to individuals and to organizations. It focuses on high participation action research projects seeking new insights into the nature of organizations and markets using models derived from sciences that recognize the inherent uncertainties of social systems.

Programs run on a national, international and regional basis and range from investigation of seemingly impossible or intractable problems to pragmatic early entry into new methods and tools such as narrative databases, social network stimulation and asymmetric threat management. The basis of all programs to look at any issue from new perspectives and to facilitate problem solving through multiple interactions between program participants. The Centre is not about consultants or academics conducting multiple interviews or observations and deriving hypothesizes and models based on their "expertise", it is about creating focused interactions between many sources of knowledge to enable the emergence of new meaning and insight. The Centre is based on a model of networked intelligence, creating a broad loosely structured coalition of academics, industrial and governmental organizations to create a dynamic learning ecology for its members.

Dave Snowden has an MBA from Middlesex University and a BA in Philosophy from Lancaster University. He is honorary fellow in knowledge management at the University of Warwick and teaches on the MBA programs at Warwick, Sophia Antipolis and Piacenza. He regularly consults at the board level with some of the world's largest companies as well as to Government and NGOs. In addition he sits on a number of advisory and other bodies including the BSI committee on standards for Knowledge Management. A gifted speaker and educator he is in regular demand as a keynote speaker worldwide. His master classes in a variety of subjects both public and private are highly rated and regularly sell out.
- posted by University @ Saturday, April 24, 2004