Customer Reviews

Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy

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Gates does a fine job of explaining how digitalisation will impact an office near you, and does this in a language which is so simple that even the average fiftysomething of a 20th Century boardroom will understand the wake-up call. The case of Bill Gates explaining e-business to board of directors of a German financial institution is worth the book price by itself. This case concludes that three revolutionary business shifts are in motion:

1 Most transactions between business and consumers, business and business, and consumers and government will become self-service digital transactions. Intermediaries will evolve to add value or perish.

2 Customer service will become the primary value added function in every business. Human involvement in service will shift from routine, low value tasks to a high-value, personal consultancy on important issues -problems or desires - for the customer.

3 The pace of transactions and the need for more personalised attention to customers will drive companies to adopt digital processes internally if they have not yet adopted them for efficiency reasons. Companies will use a digital nervous system to regularly transform their internal business processes to adapt to an environment that constantly changes because of customer needs and competition.

The people who don't like this book are IT geeks who arelooking for big vision from Gates. While it is true that Mr. Gatesdoesn't offer a revolutionary new IT toy in this book---he does professional managers a great service by providing a framework for using information technology to improve business.

Good book, it gave me some great ideas!

I found this book rather interesting to read. If you would like to run your own company, or you are just interested in reading about big business... then you will be satisfied with this book. Gates (if he really wrote most of the book) does a great job of citing examples of how technology is impacting business in today's economy. It might even give you a few ideas for making your own business more efficient.

However, this book has a major down side. I purchased this book hoping that it can give me insight of where the high tech industry is headed. Gates did not do a good job of presenting this. Instead, I found a book filled with hundreds of examples of how companies integrate computers into their business. It shows how the internet helped big companies move information and expand their customer service, but it does not show what's on the road ahead.

I recommend this book because it can help you make the most out of your company using computers. However, if you are looking for the next killer application, don't expect to find it in this book.

As IT professional I found little surprises in this book about technology and the author visions how it will further influence (change) our daily lives.

Why? Because the issue Mr. Gates is writing about with such passion is really an old story nowadays. Let me explain. We have an "old" IT infrastructure in some places that is not good enough to support companies in a new economy, fortunately most of the corporate world also possess "new" PC and PC based devices connected to the Internet that are (according to Mr. Gates) fully capable and optimal way of supporting business in the 21st century. Hmm...I know at least couple of people that will strongly disagree with that (Larry and Scott where are you :-). The result is that corporate management is desperately looking for clues how to make the best use of this "new" technology to succeed in a new economy.

This book will help you get most of the answers, but (as usually) don't buy everything you read!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not negative about the book, in fact I learned a lot from Mr. Gates as businessperson. With his enthusiastic writing style, he kept me constantly rethinking from chapter to chapter about existing solutions in my company from business perspective and NOT from IT as usually!

Another good reason to read this book are real world examples from different companies, including Microsoft Corporation itself, on how you can gain business advantage with proper use of digital tools.

Last but not least, if you think that you know Mr. Gates and his company well then think again or better yet, read this book!

One of the primary benefits of a human nervous system is to allow the senses and the mind to be in close contact. This is most helpful to alerting us to opportunities and dangers so we respond more quickly.

When the nervous sytem is working well, this is great. Disease can cause these signals to be scrambled, and the individual fares poorly.

In this book, Mr. Gates argues persuasively for having a digital counterpart to the human nervous system. What he fails to focus on enough is how to identify what data to capture, how to turn it into knowledge, and how to turn knowledge into timely action.

For those subjects, you'll have to read Bill Jensen's book on Simplicity. If you only have time to read one or the other, I suggest Simplicity over Business @ the Speed of Thought.

The wired world easily overwhelms. Timely e-mails can turn into hundreds of e-mails. Data can turn into overwhelming quantities of confusion. Without the skills and tools to do data mining, the digital nervous sytem may just make things worse. Think about it.

A reason for being concerned about this point is the history of Microsoft itself, usually having to buy or copy innovations by others to advance its technology . . . usually arriving after targeted dates with software that crashes all the time . . . usually arriving with software that is so filled with unecessary features that it runs more slowly than typewriters did in the predigital age.

My sense from a recent site visit to Dell Computer is that Dell is far ahead of Microsoft in communicating and acting on information. I suggest you read Direct from Dell instead of this book if you only have time to read two books.

From a man who is supposed to be a great visionary of technology, I was quite disappointed in this book. I only saw a flawed vision that was more backward looking than forward looking.

Taken in it's entirety, this (March) 1999 release by the author of "The Road Ahead" has been a multi-media event. The print edition has been available in hard-cover or paperback. The audio cassette format has been marketed in both abridged and unabridged versions, and there's also been an audio compact disc available. The content poured into the book's web-site has been extensive, and has included an insightful 45-minute video "chat" by Mr. Gates recorded on March 31, 1999. There is little about the publication that hasn't been covered in over 100 reviews on either Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, or other web-sites. Traditional media coverage has been extremely broad based, and the book was ranked in the top ten on just about every final 1999 business bestsellers list, including the New York Time's and USA Today's.

Like it or not, there's no denying that this book has reached out deep into the critical masses. But, (in less than a year), has the response to this work perhaps surpassed the actual content in importance?

Take for example Scott Rosenberg's hard-hitting perspective in which Mr. Gates is critiqued as an author with obviously passionate ideas on business management, but also as one who is either unwilling or unable to break out of a dull corporate-speak writing tone. Mr. Rosenberg cites "e"source proponents of the idea "that the Internet is rapidly transforming not just the speed but the tenor and content of business communications." He furthers the suggestions that the corporate lingua-franca is soon to be made a remnant of our popular culture, and could very well be replaced with a much more original form of thought as one of the results of the "Web lifestyle" Mr. Gates is promoting. Customer comments on the review pages of e-bookstore sites are given as one example, and the postings on corporate stock message boards (such as those found within Yahoo) would be another. Mr. Rosenberg is most profound when he considers whether "the very voice Bill Gates uses in Business @ The Speed of Thought is being rendered obsolete by the technology he espouses." It's too bad, but we probably won't be seeing responses by Mr. Gates to these kind of issues posted in the questions section of the book's website.

My conclusion here is to take care to consume the entire event, and don't be skimpy. Digest both the content of and the response to Business @ The Speed of Thought or whatever other media-intense works you study . Savor the combination and all of its flavors. Then draw your own conclusions and fling them into cyberspace, because one can't yearn to be a knowledge participant unless one can learn like a knowledge participant.

Records managers like myself may take particular interest in the discussion of the issue of creating a paper-less office. Don't be mislead by the title of Chapter 3 -- the author's view is realistic and the insight into Microsoft operations presented here is interesting. Additionally, the discussions in Section IV on the concept of bringing insight to business operations should be specifically noted by professionals in the records and information management industry. In particular, the thoughts in Chapter 18 on utilizing an organization's information technology department are very relative. This information is excellent support for the argument that technology has given records managers improved tools to do their jobs, while actively changing the perception of their profession.

On the cover, Bill Gates is quoted with a statement that captures the essence of managing in the information age: "I have a simple but strong belief. How you gather, manage, and use information whether you win or loose." That is true but unfortunately, Business @ the Speed of Thought doesn't live up to its promise to "give you the information you need to win". Bill Gates looks at the world through a Microsoft technology perspective. He freuently starts with asking the right questions (What can be done to increase the corporate IQ?) but then provides only incomplete, technology focused, not exactly visionary answers. In essence his vision consists of how "Microsofts" products can help you". Read IT journals if you want technology visions or read "Survival of the Smartest" if you want to know how visionary companies gather, manage, and use information.

Microsoft is renowned for watching trends, finding the best provider of new ideas and services, and buying/copying that innovation. You might call the company, the world's greatest fast follower. With the tremendous market power of its installed base of Windows, the company has moved profitably in a lot of new directions. IBM did the same before the Justice Department made the company allow anyone to use its operating sytem at modest cost. IBM also made lots of money. Was IBM a visionary company at the time? Absolutely not. Does Microsoft's success mean that it is a visionary company now? Probably not. For example, Gate's view of a paperless, electronic world proved to be a real problem during the company's recent antitrust trial with the U.S. government. Electronic records of aggressive behavior and intent kept showing up to contradict Gate's live testimony. Also remember that Gates thought the Internet was a nonstarter until quite recently, when it began its come-from-behind charge against Netscape. Specifically, the weakness of the vision is that it makes a company likely to be too internally focused. You can communicate so well with one another that you do not communicate so well with the customers and others who are important to you. I personally found the vision of Direct from Dell and Customer.com to be much more relevant. Read this book with caution, but do read it because we all need to know where Microsoft plans to take us. We'll have to go there anyway, to some extent.

I find the book to be quite interesting but not really relevant for normal people....

I think this book is only meant for CIOs, CEOs, CFOs... they are the one that are able to propose such huge investments in Digital Nervous System !!

At the last part of the book, Digital Nervous System is compared against the older methodology "Business Re-engineering" without giving some background about what Business Re-engineering actually means......

Anyway, reader need to have some sense of business before reading this... there are plenty of business terms.

This book is a beacon and a lighthouse in our transforming world of e-anything you want. Bill Gates is an optimist and it shows. I think the whole book can be reduced to a quotation by Alfred Sloan, the Chairman of General Motors : « Bedside manners are no substitute for the right diagnosis. »

Bill Gates analyzes absolutely all the consequences of the release of Information Technology in the Internet time onto the economy, society, administration, life. He does not take any precaution to sweeten or soften his message. You will follow this revolution, that is unescapable, or just plain die. When reduced to that the book is by far too long. But it is not only that.

The book studies hundreds of particular cases were the problem was confronted, solved or refused and the consequences of this acceptation to go along with modern times or of this refusal to have anything to do with such an iconoclastic approach that destroys, makes obsolete everything that was common creed in our society. Those cases are extremely well shown and described and are superbly enlightening and entertaining. Because this book is also entertaining. You will find some real pleasure in reading it.

But the book also goes beyond this. It is a book for all the CEOs and CIOs of the world. Hence it is pedagogical and didactic. It demonstrates what has to be done and it gives examples of the right solutions, and all the practical advice and even diagnosing recipes needed for any one to find their ways in the labyrinth and jungle of modern information times. The main objective then becomes to liberate thinking in business by entrusting machines with collecting and analyzing data, with the help of some human friends. When this thinking is finally liberated, business can use the speed of thought to increase its efficiency, its transformation and its progress. The general idea is that failure, slump or recession is never anything else but the inability to seize the day in these technological times.

It also, here and there, explains how Microsoft navigated through all the troubled waters of change and capitalistic success. Strange enough it makes us feel and think that the word « capitalism » itself is obsolete in global times. It is obsolete because the economy, business have to give each one member of the working team that the workers (at all levels) have to become and be for the economy to work, their total independence of thought, autonomy of decision and yet integration in the wider picture of the team. He shows marvelously that there is no business that can survive if democracy, discussion, confrontation and common objectives emerging from the aforesaid are not the very core and ethics of the economy and business. He also implies that any business has to become global to survive : global by covering the whole world ; global by envisaging the totality of a problem, product, range of products, etc ; global by the desire to dominate your field completely and totally. That leads to an understood and never expressed idea that the anti-trust regulations that are ours today are passé, old-fashioned, ineffective, even dangerous because mutilating for thought, business and the future of the world. Then competition is no longer the same thing as it used to be : the competition between several firms producing or providing the same goods or services. Competition is innovation and this can only come through the liberation of thought and through a new organization of business : a firm has to literally control its whole field of activity but including innnovation and democracy in its everyday functioning and concentrating on the core issues and activities necesary for its global role to be total, and by understanding that free business thinking will always produce the start-up that may break you if you are not one step ahead of any possible innovation. A businessperson is both a visionary prophet and a convincing guru. And keep in mind that profit, both individual and collective, is and has always been, the objective of the human race. It empowers each and all human beings with the energy to go beyond even the farthest limits and frontiers. We do not venture in hostile lands if we do not aim at getting a profit out of it. Otherwise we are forced to do it : it is slavery or the gulag.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU