In terms of the way knowledge is accumulated, the size of the company is a factor - small companies tend to function and make decisions around tacit knowledge. As companies grow, they produce formal systems and processes and focus on implicit knowledge. Because we are all inherently lazy, this knowledge has tended to remain undocumented, but with the advent of knowledge management technology, the process has become more manageable. And, it is not just marketers who are lazy - a survey of IT directors in the mid-1990s asked what they would do to prepare for the Y2K problem. The second most common answer was - "I won't be working here then."
Yes it is. We have had, to name but a few: Scientific Management - Taylorism, Henry Ford, batch processing and so on. Total Quality Management (TQM) Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - one to one marketing Knowledge Management (KM). So isn't it all just terminology inflation? Beneath the froth, and regardless of the fact that the "buzzness" may line the pockets of technology companies and consultants, I believe that the idea is sound. How much time, money and effort could a company save if it shed its collective amnesia regarding previous successes and failures? What is the cost of not knowing? It is the cost of: