An Empirical Comparison Study of the Effect of Chief Knowledge Management Officers and Knowledge Management Systems on Innovation and Financial Outcomes

There currently exist few empirical studies that detail the relationships of knowledge management executives' such as CKOs (Chief Knowledge Officers) or CLOs (Chief Learning Officers) presence at firms and the knowledge management systems maturity level of at firms to firm performance. This exploratory empirical study uses the knowledge management maturity model (KMMM) and adds the a sixth stage of executive leadership to assess financial (Net profit and revenues) and innovation (patents) firm results. The results of this research indicate that although there appears to be a moderate relationship of net income to KMMM stage of the firm. The sample chosen for this research were the 30 top patent filing firms for 2012. This sample was cross checked against another database to determine the level of executives leading the knowledge management strategic direction. It was found that of the top thirty patent filers only GE, QUALCOMM and Microsoft had executive leadership at senior Vice president or 'C' level rank.