The Cynefin framework ( ) is a conceptual framework used to aid decision-making. Created in 1999 by Dave Snowden when he worked for IBM Global Services, it has been described as a "sense-making device". Cynefin is a Welsh word for habitat. Cynefin offers five decision-making contexts or "domains"—clear (known as simple until 2014, then obvious until being recently renamed), complicated, complex, chaotic, and confusion—that help managers to identify how they perceive situations and make sense of their own and other people's behaviour. The framework draws on research into systems theory, complexity theory, network theory and learning theories. Background Terminology The idea of the Cynefin framework is that it offers decision-makers a "sense of place" from which to view their perceptions. Cynefin is a Welsh word meaning habitat, haunt, acquainted, familiar. Snowden uses the term to refer to the idea that we all have connections, such as tribal, religious and geographical, of which we may not be aware. It has been compared to the te reo Māori word tūrangawaewae, meaning a place to stand, or the "ground and place which is your heritage and that you come from". History Snowden, then of IBM Global Services, began work on a Cynefin model in 1999 to help manage intellectual capital within the company. He continued developing it as European director of IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management, and later as founder and director of the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity, established in 2002. Cynthia Kurtz, an IBM researcher, and Snowden described the framework in detail the following year in a paper, "The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world", published in IBM Systems Journal. The Cynefin Centre—a network of members and partners from industry, government and academia—began operating independently of IBM in 2004. In 2007 Snowden and Mary E. Boone described the Cynefin framework in the Harvard Business Review. Their paper, "A Leader's Framework for Decision Making", won them an "Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in OB" award from the Academy of Management's Organizational Behavior division. Domains Cynefin offers five decision-making contexts or "domains": clear, complicated, complex, chaotic, and a centre of confusion. The domain names have changed over the years. Kurtz and Snowden (2003) called them known, knowable, complex, and chaotic. Snowden and Boone (2007) changed known and knowable to simple and complicated. From 2014 Snowden used obvious in place of simple, and is now using the term clear The