is a political scientist with a special interest in policy communication, social and organizational learning, and knowledge management (especially in sustainability and national security affairs), known for producing large scale murals.

Was Senior Researcher at Stanford University’s Human Science and Technology Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR) for 27 years. While he was a research associate at Columbia University, he created a widely used methodology for the analysis of any complex stable subject matter. This research became an international consulting company, Information Mapping, Inc. He was CEO and chairman for 20 years. He has taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Sheffield (UK) universities. Recently, he has been developing large info-murals and leading “mess mapping” projects and workshops to enable decision making groups get their minds around larger contexts for strategic discussions of wicked problems and mega-messes. The projects range from global climate change, energy security, nuclear waste disposal, NASA’s research programs. He was the synthesizer and visualizer for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Vision 2050 project the European-Commission-supported project on policy options for a resource efficient Europe (POLFREE). His development of visual argumentation mapping has resulted in the publication of the Mapping Great Debates series, which, in the same year received a full-page review in Nature, as well as being hung as artwork in a national museum in The Hague as part of an exhibit on information design as a fine art.
His 7 books include Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century (1998) and Mapping Hypertext (1989, a book about the web 2 years before the web was created). His most recent book (still in draft) is: The Little Book of Wicked Problems and Social Messes.
He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the International Society for Performance and Instruction. He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.
www.bobhorn.us
Timeline: – Lives in: California, USA