The very idea that knowledge needs to be managed suggests that its growth should not be left in a wild state: at best it remains unused and at worst it wastes resources. Yet, this managerial mindset goes against the grain of the past 2500 years of Western thought, which has valorized the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, regardless of its costs and benefits. What has changed in the interim? Has it been for the better?

The rise of knowledge management represents a backlash against scientific professionalism in the pursuit of knowledge, but without the interest in reviving the old amateur ethic that had existed when the pursuit of knowledge was expected of any leisured person. (See rhetoric.) When academics hear the phrase “the most knowledge produced at the lowest cost”, they presume it implies an interest in an absolute increase in society's knowledge stock. In contrast, the knowledge manager wants a return on investment. Not surprisingly, the most profitable firms do not devote too much of their budgets to research and development (R&D).

Knowledge managers are mainly interested in exploiting existing knowledge more efficiently so as to capture a larger share of the markets in which they compete. Their interest in producing and distributing new knowledge extends only to what will enable them to realize that goal. Indeed, knowledge managers are masters of what may be called “counter-entrepreneurship”: they find innovative ways of inhibiting or disciplining innovation by manipulating scarcity in either the supply or the demand for knowledge (understood as a good or a service).