Always good to know where it all started: Bill Ives explains in six parts the history of knowledge management. In the last sentence (of this first part, the introduction), he says that the story starts 4000 BC (and not mid 1980s). Hmm, I wonder what happened at that time.
For me, the term knowledge management was something I first saw in an advertisement for a job application, I think in 1997. At that time I was finishing my PhD and was looking around where to apply. This sounded interesting, though I had no idea what it was. Just the taste of these two word.. knowledge and ... management. I did my PhD and Masters study in the field of education, and I knew at that time that education is not really my field of interest. More how people interact and exchange what they know (so more on communication than instructing), and how they use technology with that. I didn't apply (stupid may be), but I started looking for explanations on this new term.
Later, in 1998 I became involved in my first research project on knowledge management. We had to explain the term all the times, and probably weren't very succesful at that, because the project failed. However externally succesful, internally the project didn't fit. So, I'm happy that we now (few years later) have a succesful project, still in the same area, with a different filling of course, and which is supported by the management.
So that's a bit of my history of KM.
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