Keynote Speakers

David Snowden ~ Social complexity: from individuals to identities and from hierarchies to networks

Thursday, June 16 ~ 9:30 - 10:30 am

David Snowden

Dave Snowden has been one of the leading figures in the movement towards integration of humanistic approaches to knowledge management with appropriate technology and process design. Best known for his work on the role of narrative and decision making in complexity, he is an entertaining speaker and a formidable realist, and one of the few KM thought leaders who can bring together the academic and practitioner perspectives into a single, comprehensible purview. Dave is Director of the Cynefin Centre, where he continues to develop some of the most original work in the world on using "organic" knowledge management techniques to deliver value for organizations. The Cynefin Centre (www.cynefin.net) spun out of IBM in July 2004 to focus on creating an open source movement for consultancy around the principles of social complexity. He has an MBA from Middlesex University and a BA in Philosophy from Lancaster University. He is adjunct Professor of Knowledge Management at the University of Canberra, an honorary fellow in knowledge management at the University of Warwick, Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and MiNE Fellow at the Universita Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore in Italy. He regularly acts as a consultant and advisor at the board level with some of the world's largest companies as well as with Government and NGOs.

Social complexity: from individuals to identities and from hierarchies to networks
Knowledge management as a main line function in organizations is in decline, with many of the functions becoming “business as usual” locating into HR, IT and other functional silos. For those who saw knowledge management as a new way of thinking about the organization and society the emergent discipline of social complexity is providing a new, and scientifically based focus for their work. Social complexity deals with the inherent uncertainties of human interactions, the pattern basis of human intelligence and the role of networks in enabling self organizing and resilient communities. This presentation will introduce delegates to social complexity and will more specifically look at two applications of the discipline: the use of narrative and sense making databases as a mechanism for knowledge storage and transmission and the resolution of intractable problems through the stimulation of cross silo informal networks both within and across the boundaries of the organization.