Knowledge management has been around in some form for decades. As a term, it was coined in the 1980s by Peter Drucker. In the 1990s, KM was recognized as a discipline. Some may argue that KM has been around for centuries in terms of capturing, storing, and distributing knowledge. But, KM gathered traction in the late 1980s.
With the facilitation and acceleration of globalization, many companies experienced a “downsizing” or “rightsizing” by using digitization to improve productivity and efficiency. But, organizations also noticed a widening knowledge gap as employees left. So then, organizations started figuring out how to retain knowledge and KM gained speed.