知识经济（KnowledgeEconomy），顾名思义，就是以知识为基础的经济（KnowledgeBasedEconomy）。这一术语的出现源于人们力图对工业经济时代之后一个新的经济时代加以定性的尝试。托夫勒在《第三次琅潮》中用“后工业经济”来描述的经济时代，而奈斯比特则在《大趋势》中提出“ Knowledge economy, as its name implies, is knowledge-based economy. The emergence of this term stems from the attempt by people to qualitatively define a new economic era after the industrial economy. Toffler used the post-industrial economy in the Third Wave to describe the economic era, while Naisbitt proposed in the Megatrends that "