Scholarly thinking has nearly always preceded the definitions tailored by the software industry. Definition's on terminology are important but will differ depending on what side of the balance sheet the definition now sits. KM is now being defined by the people making money from it and who are being paid to evangelize. The crux of KM comes down to how my company can be more effective and efficient and pay higher dividends to share holders. Staff attrition costs companies millions and is far more prevalent now than it was 30 years ago. That's a paradigm shift! You lose your people you lose your knowledge and often to your competitor. Companies have to get their heads around this and technology has helped. Corporate knowledge attrition is only one aspect of the KM field but I want to relate this comment to it.

By capturing the "deltas" of argument / discussion / creation on a daily weekly monthly basis in systems which relate to the particular "environment" in which they are being captured and then aggregating these, provides a knowledge pool. Web2.0 helps capture the "deltas" as well as creating tools which relate and appeal to the "environment" in which they are used. Systems can then aggregate and provide the ability to search and share experiences to prevent reinventing the wheel and slowing the operations down. The skill will be to present the knowledge pool back to the employees in a way that works for everyone. Dr Martin Porter at Cambridge University helped develop some very interesting Natural Language search algorithms back in the late 90's which disappointingly have still not been incorporated into our favourite search engines.

Aside: Your knowledge is often in the minds of others and this is your extended knowledge pool. Not to be forgotten and Web2.0's ability to maintain and tap ex-colleague relationships extends this and prolongs its useful life. In the future our employers will judge us on the quality/depth/proximity and not quantity of this extended Collaborative/Social Business Network