Who is the Knowledge Champion within your organisation?

“Why, that is easy!”, some of you may say, “we have a role that corresponds to what the literature calls the Chief Knowledge Officer (Gray, 1998)”. Others may say: “We don’t have a Chief Knowledge Officer post so we don’t have a Knowledge Champion”. Yet others may say: “We don’t have an individual on the Executive Board with responsibility for Knowledge Management so it falls by default to the Librarian – surely they are the Knowledge Champion?!”

Of course, you are all partly right – where there is a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) within an organisation, whether by name or function, you would sincerely hope that they would be a Knowledge Champion. Certainly if they are not (or indeed if the Librarian is not) there is something potentially wrong with Knowledge Management in your organisation. However the concept of the Knowledge Champion is closely allied with the theory of Diffusion of Innovations promoted by Rogers (1995). Knowledge champions are innovators. They are also opinion leaders. They will usually have a specialist function within the organisation “and possess expertise in knowledge management as well as a thorough understanding of their domain, the firm and the industry”. As knowledge sharing works best in the absence of a formal hierarchy using a hierarchical “Chief Knowledge Officer” role can actually damage the creation of a successful knowledge based organisation. It can result in everyone within the organisation pigeonholing knowledge management as the CKO’s responsibility. It can assume that they also have the leadership skills to complement their undoubted technical abilities.

Knowledge Champions will be identifiable from the following characteristics:

  • They come from within the organisation and know the organisation, its culture and its key players;
  • They have had a certain length of experience which gives credibility to the entrepreneurial and building aspects of the job;

Managing knowledge is everybody's responsibility, but it can end up as nobody's responsibility. By all means get your organisation to create a Chief Knowledge Officer post to be responsible and accountable for the Knowledge Management Strategy but also identify the Knowledge Champions within your organisation who will help to move this from Strategy to Culture.

References and Further (Optional) Reading

FOLIO (2007). Stakeholders and Opinion leaders Making Your Case Effectively (Machiavel) Course. Briefing #2.

Gray JAM. Where’sthechiefknowledge officer? BMJ 1998; 317: 832–40.

Iles V and Sutherland K. Organisational Change: A review for health care managers, professionals and researchers. London: NHS Service Delivery and Organisation Programme, 2002: 56-58.

Jones, N.B., Herschel, R.T. and Moesel, D.D. Using “knowledge champions” to facilitate knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management 2003; 7 (1): 42-63.

Rogers, E (1995) Diffusion of Innovations, 4th ed., The Free Press: New York, NY.

Skyrme, D J (2002). The 3Cs of Knowledge Sharing: Culture, Co-opetition and Commitment. I3 Update / Entovation International News. No. 64. Available at: [Accessed 29 April 2008]