Definition

CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer)

Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) is a corporate title for the person responsible for overseeing knowledge management within an organization. The CKO position is related to, but broader than, the CIO position. The CKO's job is to ensure that the company profits from the effective use of knowledge resources. Investments in knowledge may include employees, processes and intellectual property; a CKO can help an organization maximize the return on investment (ROI) on those investments.

Furthermore, a CKO can help an organization to:

Maximize the return on investment (ROI) in knowledge.
Maximize benefits from intangible assets, such as branding and customer relationships.
Repeat successes and analyze and learn from failures.
Promote best practices.
Foster innovation.
Avoid the loss of knowledge that can result from loss of personnel.

See also CEO and others.

Related glossary terms: CIO (Chief Information Officer), business integration, business process, systems thinking, clean room technique (clean room design), work breakdown structure (WBS), B2E (Business2Employee or Business-to-Employee), Total Quality Management (TQM), Compliance: Glossary, C-level

Contributor(s): Ajmal Sait

This was last updated in March 2008

Posted by: Margaret Rouse

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Resources from around the Web
- Wikipedia has an entry about the CKO.
- David Skyrme's article deals with the question, 'Do you need a CKO?'

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