Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy. Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of knowledge workers. Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker. Productivity of the knowledge worker is not at least not primarily a matter of the quantity of output.
Quality is at least as important.
It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization in preference to all other opportunities. They will have to learn to stay young and mentally alive during a fifty-year working life. They will have to learn how and when to change what they do, how they do it and when they do it. Knowledge workers are likely to outlive their employing organization. Even if knowledge workers postpone entry into the labor force as long as possible if, for instance, they stay in school till their late twenties to get a doctorate they are likely, with present life expectancies in the developed countries, to live into their eighties.