Knowledge management used to be mostly restricted to the work environment and focused on personal productivity. With the rise of the passion economy and the proliferation of indie thinkers, a new wave of personal knowledge management tools is taking over the market. Users want more than utility tools. They want tools for thought.

Small is beautiful: moving away from large knowledge sharing communities such as Stackoverflow, niche knowledge sharing communities are emerging. Based around communal values of

People are being paid to think. Indie thinkers spend their time asking questions, researching niche topics, connecting ideas, and share their newly acquired knowledge online for people to consume.

Instead of sharing the end product of their research, users are increasingly comfortable learning in public and publish their process, including any mistakes or dead ends. The epitome of this “learning

entrepreneurs and writers, these influencers rely on new dissemination tools to monetize their unique knowledge.

self-development, intellectual curiosity, and peer-learning, these communities have widely varying business models, from freemium to premium.

Beyond collecting and storing information, new tools for thought allow users to resurface, connect, and generate knowledge. Whether visual or textual, this new breed of tools encourage users to link their ideas together, find interesting patterns, and create original content based on their research.

From fragmentation to integration: more recently, Memex has launched a feature which allows users to export highlights and notes to many formats and platforms, including Roam Research. However, while these signs of integration are promising, many tools for thought are still currently hard to work with together, and multi-tools workflows can be... See more

users to collaborate on their learning journey