Many people in the company and outside have asked what is the role of a Chief Knowledge Officer or CKO in an organization?

Chief Knowledge Officer is “the individual that is in charge of building, maintaining a knowledge management infrastructure and building a knowledge culture to align with the business strategy and create a competitive advantage.” The Chief Knowledge Officer position is fairly new in business compared to the existence of the Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Finance Officer on the executive team. In the fast moving companies, the CKO role is becoming increasing critical and thus, the position sits on the executive team.

The data pyramid is Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom. Information systems are good at storing data and information. The challenge has been the management of knowledge that results from the stored information. Knowledge has two components, explicit and tacit. The management of tacit knowledge has been very difficult. More on this later. In my own role as CKO I lead the organization that have knowledge workers in the areas of market research, competitive intelligence, economic factors research, business cases and financial modeling, marketing analysis, web analytics, product pricing, packaging and promotions, customer care analysis, etc.