Knowledge Economy

I kept bumping into this phrase on my travels around the education & training sites. It's one of those terms I've read, & even used, without properly looking into what it means & where it comes from. So that was tonight's assignment....

Google offered me this page:

The Knowledge Economy - What Is The Knowledge Economy? from the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development.
The explanation here is quite clear & comprehensive; it doesn't assume too much about the reader's previous acquaintance with economic theory (just as well, because mine is slight) & talks about areas I do know something about ("death of distance" for instance). So far, so constructivistly good.

Narrowing the search to pages from the UK (because I was a little thrown by the NZ focus) took me back into the fluff'n'guff zone.

So I did what I always do at times like this & asked Wikipedia.

Knowledge economy

Statements such as the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy of the 20th century need rewriting in an interconnected world where resources such as know-how are more critical than other economic resources. told me that this is a topic of some relevance to H806! Good job I looked, really...

In one of those neat coincidences, I learned that the phrase is attributed to Peter Drucker, a management theorist I'd never heard of until earlier today, when his death was mentioned in a blog written by a fellow prospective H806 student. I'd even read the Guardian obituary out of curiosity & been none the wiser. (It doesn't mention the knowledge economy concept amongst Drucker's contributions to management theory.) Then tonight, there the name was again!

I do have a lot of gaps to fill.