The knowledge economy is the use of knowledge to create goods and services. In particular, it refers to a high portion of skilled workers in the economy of a locality, country, or the world, and the idea that most jobs require specialized skills. In particular, the main personal capital of knowledge workers is knowledge, and many knowledge worker jobs require much thinking and manipulating information as opposed to moving or crafting physical objects. It stands in contrast to an agrarian economy or an industrialized economy. Knowledge economy emphasizes the importance of skills in a service economy, the third phase of economic development, also called a post-industrial economy. It is related to the terms information economy, which emphasizes the importance of information as non-physical capital, and digital economy, which emphasize the degree to which information technology facilitates trade. For companies, intellectual property such as trade secrets, copyrighted material, and patented processes become more valuable in a knowledge economy than in earlier eras. The global economy transition to a knowledge economy is also referred to as the Information Age, bringing about an information society. The term knowledge economy was made famous by Peter Drucker as the title of Chapter 12 in his book The Age of Discontinuity, that Drucker attributed to economist Fritz Machlup, originating in the idea of scientific management developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Concepts
A key concept of the knowledge economy is that knowledge and education can be treated as one of the following two:
A business product, as educational and innovative intellectual products and services can be exported for a high value return.
A productive asset.
It can be defined as: The initial foundation for the knowledge economy was introduced in 1966 in the book The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. In this book, Drucker described the difference between the manual worker and the knowledge worker. The manual worker, according to him, works with their hands and produces goods or services. In contrast, a knowledge worker works with their head, not hands, and produces ideas, knowledge, and information. The key problem in the formalization and modeling of knowledge economy is a vague definition of knowledge, which is a rather relative concept. For example, it is not proper to consider information society as interchangeable with knowledge society. Information is usually not equivalent to knowledge. Their use depends on individual and group preferences which are "economy-dependent".
Evolution
The knowledge economy is also seen as the latest stage of development in global economic restructuring. Thus far, the developed world has transitioned from an agricultural economy to industrial economy to post-industrial/mass production economy to knowledge economy. This latest stage has been marked by the upheavals in technological innovations and the globally competitive need for innovation with new products and processes that develop from the research community. Thomas A. Stewart points out that just as the industrial revolution did not end agriculture because people have to eat, the knowledge revolution is unlikely to end industry because people still need physical products. In the knowledge economy, the specialized labor force is characterized as computer literate and well-trained in handling data, developing algorithms and simulated models, and innovating on processes and systems. Harvard Business School Professor, Michael Porter, asserts that today's economy is far more dynamic and that comparative advantage is less relevant than competitive advantage which rests on “making more productive use of inputs, which requires continual innovation". Consequently, the technical STEM careers including computer scientists, engineers, chemists, biologists, mathematicians, and scientific inventors will see continuous demand in years to come. Additionally, well-situated clusters, which Michael Porter argues is vital in global economies, connect locally with linked industries, manufacturers, and other entities that are related by skills, technologies, and other common inputs. Hence, knowledge is the catalyst and connective tissue in modern economies. Ruggles and Holtshouse argue the change is characterized by a dispersion of power and by managers who lead by empowering knowledge workers to contribute and make decisions. With Earth's depleting natural resources, the need for green infrastructure, a logistics industry forced into just-in-time deliveries, growing global demand, regulatory policy governed by performance results, and a host of other items high priority is put on knowledge; and research becomes paramount. Knowledge provides the technical expertise, problem-solving, performance measurement and evaluation, and data management needed for the trans-boundary, interdisciplinary global scale of today's competition. Worldwide examples of the knowledge economy taking place among many others include: Silicon Valley in California; aerospace and automotive engineering in Munich, Germany; biotechnology in Hyderabad, India; electronics and digital media in Seoul, South Korea; petrochemical and energy industry in Brazil. Many other cities and regions try to follow a knowledge-driven development paradigm and increase their knowledge base by investing in higher education and research institutions in order to attract high skilled labor and better position themselves in the global competition. Yet, despite digital tools democratizing access to knowledge, research shows that knowledge economy activities remain as concentrated as ever in traditional economic cores. It has been suggested that the next evolutionary step after knowledge economy is the network economy, where the relatively localized knowledge is now being shared among and across various networks for the benefit of the network members as a whole, to gain economic of scale in a wider, more open scale. It has been hypothesized that the gradual evolution of network economy would create a well interconnected economic order, which would then begin to concentrate on the passion of individuals, gradually leading to a passion based economy.
The United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development report concluded that for developing countries to successfully integrate ICTs and sustainable development in order to participate in the knowledge economy they need to intervene collectively and strategically. Such collective intervention suggested would be in the development of effective national ICT policies that support the new regulatory framework, promote the selected knowledge production, and use of ICTs and harness their organizational changes to be in line with the Millennium Development Goals. The report further suggests that developing countries to develop the required ICT strategies and policies for institutions and regulations taking into account the need to be responsive to the issues of convergence.
