1. Knowledge management aims to leverage collective wisdom to increase organizational responsiveness and innovation through the continuous flow of knowledge to the right people at the right time. 2. It involves strategies, tools, and techniques for managing both explicit knowledge that is recorded as well as tacit knowledge that resides within people. 3. Knowledge management has its roots in the recognition that much of an organization's valuable knowledge walks out the door, and emerged as a field in the 1980s with the proliferation of information technology.