[2] Snowden graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in philosophy from the University of Lancaster, where he was a member of County College.

[7][8][9] In 2000 he became European director of the company's Institute for Knowledge Management,[4] and in 2002 he founded the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity.

[11][12][13] Snowden left IBM in 2004 and a year later founded Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd, a management-consulting firm based in Singapore, now trading as The Cynefin Company.

[14] Snowden is the author of several articles and book chapters on the Cynefin framework, the development of narrative as a research method, and the role of complexity in sensemaking.

[2] In 2008 he and co-author Mary E. Boone won an "Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in OB" award from the Academy of Management's Organizational Behavior division for a Harvard Business Review article on Cynefin.