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

by Bill Gates and Collins Hemingway

Book Overview

In his new book, Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates discusses how technology can help run businesses better today and how it will transform the nature of business in the near future. Gates stresses... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446525685
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.2" x 1.5" x 6.2"

Customer Reviews

A must read for future Software Billionaires

Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy by Bill Gates When it comes to producing results, Bill Gates takes the cake. As founder of Microsoft; Gates is in a unique and powerful position to not only prognosticate, but he has the power to boldly shape the future. Like him or not, Gates deeply understands business, and particularly the software industry. Therefore I submit that it is wise to listen to what he says about the future. Digital convergence is in the air, shaping the very world around us. Bill Gates analyzes the consequences of the release of technology onto the economy and society at large. Gates makes it clear that the digital revolution takes no prisoners and that you must adapt to the unescapable digital revolution, or die. Business @ the Speed of Thought is broken down into 23 chapters in 6 sections I - Information Flow Is Your Lifeblood II - Commerce: The Internet Changes Everything III - Manage Knowledge To Improve Strategic Thought IV - Bring Insight To Business Operations V - Special Enterprises VI - Expect The Unexpected Business @ the Speed of Thought is an exciting read that will inspire you to take on the world. Gates makes it clear that we're near the beginning of a great revolution. If you think about it, the PC is fairly new and the Internet is in its absolute infancy. In fact, we're just beginning to discover what the computer can do for us. Gates says, and I certainly agree, that there will be many more billionaires created in the next generation. - Excerpted from a more complete review in the March issue of Byvation

Read it fast if you don't want to be behind times

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 underst

A wonderful book for company owners

I think that Mr.Bill Gates is very good at writing books.At first he gives examples from his company and suggests us to do the same in our companies.He tells what digital nervous system is and tells us to use it in our lives in our companies.He means to tell that being the first on the internet is very important and give examples of companies which take this as a principal.For example he gives Dell company as an example.He says that he built a site on the net and now it is doing half of its sells on the net.He says that soon we will use the internet as a normal thing and for example while going on the road we will connect to internet and chat in our own family chat rooms and maybe learn the shopping list.It will be very easy.It was so fascinating that I couldn't leave the book.I sat reading it for hours.I recommend it to you.

prepare for millennium 3 with this book

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.

Can the World's Foremost Copier Be a Visionary?

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.