Evolution of KM

Knowledge management has a long and distinguished history. It was as long ago as the 1960s, when Peter Drucker first coined the term “knowledge worker”.

Some of the significant events were:
1986 – publication by Swedish knowledge management pioneer Karl-Erik Sveiby of The Know-How Company (with Tom Lloyd).
1987 – ‘Managing the Knowledge Assets into the 21st Century’ round table (between US academia, business and government) – one of the first nationwide efforts to harness intellectual capital.
1991 – appointment of Leif Edvinsson as Vice President of intellectual capital for Skandia, arguably the first formal board level appointment related to knowledge management
1991 – publication of seminal Harvard Business Review article by Ikujiro Nonaka on the ‘knowledge-creating company’, later expanded and published as a book with Hirotaka Takeuchi (1995)
1993 – ‘Intellectual capital: your company’s most valuable asset’ – article by Tom Stewart in Fortune that helped raise awareness of knowledge management in the world of business
1995 – first business seminars and conferences in the USA e.g. Knowledge For Strategic Advantage – co-sponsored by Arthur Andersen and the American Productivity and Quality Center, held in Houston.
1996 – first business conferences in Europe
1998 – The World Bank chooses the theme Knowledge for Development as the topic for its annual world development report.
1999 - Blog was introduced.
2000 - podcast considered as an “audio blog.” started becoming popular. Although Internet-based audio has been around since the early 1990s when they were known as “Internet radio” or “Web radio.