Most top managers recognize the value of managing knowledge. In a 1998 survey of North American senior executives, 77 percent rated "improving the development, sharing, and use of knowledge throughout the business" as very or extremely important. But should companies appoint a chief knowledge officer (CKO) to do the job?

The answer depends on whether the CEO and senior management are prepared to make the position succeed. Certainly, thanks to the groundwork laid by pioneering knowledge managers, CKOs can now create substantial value. First employed in the early 1990s to foster the flow of knowledge throughout increasingly complex organizations, they functioned rather like plumbers, routing bits of information through different pipes to the right people. They then built better pipes, such as company-wide e-mail networks and corporate intranets, and, still later, redesigned work and communications processes to promote collaboration.

The CKO can stand back and manage interventions that cross formal business boundaries, thus helping the enterprise as a whole

Today, in organizations that already have these technical and social networks, CKOs can take a more strategic perspective, scanning the enterprise to discover how they might improve processes and customer relationship management as well as promote employee learning. Other senior...