The Cynefin Centre is The Cynefin Company’s hub that primarily focuses on working within the not-for-profit, government and academic sectors. Our action research and development offering is membership-based and geared towards the application of complexity science to social good. We work at the limits, where research becomes practice, and we want to make (and are making) a difference.

The Cynefin Centre is Dave Snowden’s primary area of focus, with flagship research programmes into Healthcare, Education, Climate Change, International Development & Human Rights, Numinous: Religion and Spirituality, Citizen Engagement & Democratic Innovation.  

These programmes are, however, not exclusively for participation or application in the social good space alone: many commercial applications arise from the research and businesses are finding more and more opportunity and value from these, and other programmes.

Complexity is about constant emergence. There are many areas to explore and much to pioneer. The Cynefin Centre’s lab explores the edges. Partnering with other organisations to research and develop new spaces informed by Complexity. The focus of the lab is research within commercial spaces. The lab combines the latest from our academic research hub with commercial applications

The Cynefin Centre Australia applies the pioneering work in complexity of Dave Snowden in the Asia Pacific context.

The Cynefin Centre Australia primarily focuses on working within the not-for-profit, government and academic sectors, with action research and development projects applying complexity science principles, methods and approaches to social good. We focus on research becoming practice, learning from doing, making sense of complexity accessible and understandable. For this, co-creation and collaboration with all involved in any project are fundamental principles.

There are Cynefin Centre flagship research programs into healthcare; education; climate change; power, discrimination and conflict; citizen engagement and democratic innovation. In CC Australia, we are explicitly focused on the integration and application of indigenous knowledge to complex issues, building complexity literacy for grass roots community activation, and the development and implementation of consultation and engagement processes using complexity based methods and processes that ensure equity in access and participation, sovereignty of data and decision making, and transparency of evaluation and results.