(FORTUNE Magazine) – Pick up the latest FORTUNE, Forbes, or Fast Company--gosh, they're all thinner, aren't they?--and you'll know that knowledge management is what we all must do better, you value-added knowledge worker, you. Knowledge workers are the value drivers. If your company is hip, trendy, or techie, chances are you even have a chief knowledge officer to oversee your company's precious intellectual capital.

That CKO is obsessed with boosting your company's ROI--return on intranet. Knowledge management and network management seem inextricably interlinked. A knowledge of technology is essential for managing the technology of knowledge.

Why not? Knowledge is a key corporate asset--so leverage it. Who better to create knowledge management infrastructures than the fabulous folks who handle "information management"? What is knowledge but value-added information? Indeed, wasn't data processing the forerunner of information management? Didn't information management beget knowledge management?

Today's top management must be anticipatory, aggressive, and proactive. Do you see where I'm going here? Knowledge management is clearly just a phase, an ephemeral link in the great value chain of organizational productivity. Knowledge management simply doesn't go far enough. Organizations have to have the courage and creativity to look to the management destiny beyond knowledge management. I'm confident you know what that destiny is; it's the logical extension of knowledge well managed: Wisdom Management[TM].

Wisdom trumps knowledge. A wise CEO will surely make better decisions than the merely knowledgeable one. A wise company inspires greater trust and loyalty from employees and customers than one that simply has more knowledge. Why focus on developing expert systems and "knowledge portals" when we should really be building wisdom systems and wisdom portals? Why make knowledge management the organizational centerpiece of investment when what we aspire to is greater wisdom? Wisdom simply has a better brand than knowledge.

Let's cut to the intellectual chase: Let's leapfrog knowledge management and move directly to wisdom management. Whenever you see the word "knowledge," substitute the word "wisdom."

Instead of identifying key knowledge assets, locate and cherish wisdom assets. Instead of asking what new knowledge is central to generating innovation, ask what new wisdom will spark new products, new services, and new relationships. Come now, shouldn't you try to train wise leaders rather than just knowledgeable ones? Passing along wisdom is not the same as sharing knowledge. The CKO is dead; long live the CWO!

But what, you ask, is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? Well, it's not unlike the difference between data and information...or information and knowledge. Most managers can tell the difference between wisdom and knowledge with the same confidence with which they distinguish between information and knowledge or, for that matter, data and information. Surely your company is sophisticated enough to draw these distinctions and manage itself accordingly.

Of course, companies must be careful about instantiating mere conventional wisdoms into their wisdom management systems. That is just wisdom's counterpart to the perennial challenge of data integrity. Indeed, we need meta-wisdom--wisdom about wisdom. So companies need to manage their wisdom data, wisdom information, and wisdom knowledge strategically and rigorously. Foolish wisdom management could prove even more disastrous than ignorant information management. But who would argue that well-designed wisdom management systems will deliver superior results to knowledge management systems of comparable quality?

That said, C-level executives have an obligation to resist pressures to build new systems around the fad of knowledge management. Responsible leadership--visionary leadership--must look beyond knowledge for the best way to go. Let's commit ourselves to the strategic benefits of wisdom. Isn't that the wisest choice a knowledgeable organization could make?

Michael Schrage is co-director of MIT Media Lab's e-markets initiative and the author of Serious Play. He can be reached at michael_schrage@fortunemail.com.