ABSTRACT
This chapter defines knowledge economy as production and services based on knowledge-intensive (KI) activities that contribute to an accelerated pace of technical and scientific advance, as well as rapid obsolescence. The commercial knowledge and technology-intensive (KTI) industries play a big role in the US economy. The salient characteristics of KI work can be synthesized into six different categories. These categories are labeled content of knowledge work, complexity of the work, knowledge and skills required, and autonomy versus control, collective knowledge systems, and learning orientation. Peter Drucker said knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work nine-to-five, and that smart businesses will "strip away everything that gets in the knowledge workers' way." Knowledge-based and technology-intensive industries are based on technological innovation. Technology-based innovations are also common to certain business models. Knowledge is a changing system with interactions among experience, skills, facts, relationships, values, thinking processes, and meanings.
