Page 143 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

Traditionally understood, intellectual knowledge was ‘contained’ in
one of the recognised disciplines or branches of formal scientific
inquiry or their equivalent in the social sciences and humanities.
Within such disciplinary specialisms, newknowledge could be tested
against existing bodies, using established methodology and techniques
of inquiry. This was explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge or ‘know-
how’ was of lower intellectual and social status, being regarded as
technical, the province of artisans and mechanics, not scientists and
intellectuals.
In the neweconomy, knowledge has become much more volatile,
interdisciplinary and exposed to the workings of commerce,
entrepreneurship and large-scale exploitation. Scientific, intellectual
and tacit knowledge are much more interdependent; for instance in
the IT area, where technical skills and intellectual innovation are
inseparable.
Knowledge in the new economy has to be distinctive. It has to be
easy to replicate, but hard to imitate (Leadbeater and Oakley, 2001: 19).
Further, it has to be put into an entrepreneurial context, to mobilise
capital resources and find a market. Such knowledge differs from the
kind of ‘public good’ knowledge exemplified by the traditional
sciences and disciplines. But it may still sustain public, even utopian,
ambitions. Charles Leadbeater, for instance, argues that the new
economy is about creating value, human and social as well as financial:
A modern society’s goal should be to maximise the
production and distribution of knowledge, to combine in a
single ideal democratic and economic imperatives. Societies
become more democratic as people become more literate,
numerate and knowledgeable, capable of making informed
choices and challenging authority, so allowing them to take
charge of their lives. . . . Political empowerment and
economic opportunity stem from the same root: the spread
of knowledge.

(Leadbeater, 1997: 222)

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

Charles Leadbeater uses chocolate cake recipes as a metaphor to
describe the workings of the knowledge economy. A chocolate cake

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