Speaker

Dave Snowden

Founder and Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge

Talk

Managing in Complexity (and chaos)

Biography

Dave Snowden is CSO & Founder of Cognitive Edge and Director of the Cynefin Centre. He has pioneered a science based approach to organ-isations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style. He holds positions as extra-ordinary Professor at the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch as well as visiting Professor at the Universi-ty of Hull in the Centre for Systems Studies. He has held similar posi-tions at several other Universities. He held the position of senior fel-low at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Uni-versity and the Civil Service College in Singapore during a sabbatical period.

Excerpt

Snowden was the prime author on the EU Field Guide which emphasises the need to create a highly resilient organisation, able to respond to the unknown unknowables. That involves key roles for technology in building the capability for human sensor networks to provide real time decision support and weak signal detection as well as knowing what the organisation knows to optimise radical repurposing of existing capability to handle new and unexpected needs and requirements. Of necessity that involves approaches to design and architecture which are radically different to the linear and manufacturing approaches of much Agile practice. This presentation will take delegates into new ways of thinking, but critically though pragmatic open source methods, acting in the face of uncertainty