Chief Knowledge Officers

Abstract

A chief knowledge officer (CKO) is a senior executive who is responsible for ensuring that an organization maximizes the value it achieves through one of its most important assets-knowledge. Knowledge is often defined as information exercised for problem solving, understanding, and benefit. By adopting a CKO, firms formally recognize that knowledge is an asset that needs to be captured, disseminated, and shared to enhance firm performance and value creation. And most of all, they realize it is an asset that must be managed. Knowledge management is seen as essential, because firms today are valued in part on market perceptions of expertise as expressed through their processes, products and services (Choo, 1998).