Business at the Speed of Thought: Using a Digital Nervous System (Penguin Business) |
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Bill Gates
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Pages: 496 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 0140283110
Pub: Penguin Books Ltd
Pub date: 1999-03-25
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 447193
Editorial Review:
So where do you want to go tomorrow? That's the question Bill Gates tries to answer in Business @ the Speed of Thought. Gates offers a 12-step programme for companies wanting to do business in the next millennium. The book's premise: Thanks to technology, the speed of business is accelerating at an ever-increasing rate and to survive, it must develop an infrastructure--a "digital nervous system"--that allows for the unfettered movement of information inside a company. Gates writes: "The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition ... is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose."
The book is peppered with examples of companies that have already successfully engineered information networks to manage inventory, sales, and customer relationships better. The examples run from Coca-Cola's ability to download sales data from vending machines to Microsoft's own internal practices, such as its reliance on e-mail for company-wide communication and the conversion of most paper processes to digital ones (an assertion that seems somewhat at odds with the now-infamous "by hand on sheets of paper" method of tracking profits that was revealed during Microsoft's antitrust trial).
While Gates breaks no new ground--dozens of authors have been writing about competing on a digital playing field for some time, among them Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian in Information Rules and Patricia Seybold in Customers.com--businesses that want a wakeup call may find this book a ringer. With excerpts in Time magazine, a dedicated Web site and an all-out media assault, Microsoft is working hard to push Business @ the Speed of Thought into the international dialogue and for many it will be difficult to see the book as anything but a finely tuned marketing campaign for the forthcoming versions of Windows NT and MS Office. Nevertheless, as Gates has shown time and time again, he, Microsoft, and perhaps even this book you may ignore at your own peril. --Harry C. Edwards, Amazon.com
Reader Reviews:
Sharing Is Good, But What Should Be Shared? (1/1 people found this helpful)
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 data 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.
This book wasn't timely when it came out . . . and time hasn't been good to its message.
Time for Business to get into IT (3/3 people found this helpful)
I found this book very useful in explaining the way that IT can be applied by businesses, large and small.
Although much of the information contained in the book is well recognised within the IT industry, the message still hasn't hit home for many business owners and managers.
Working in systems development, I still find that senior managers barely have a grasp of IT at all, let alone how it is going to shape their industry.
The message from this book is very timely, and is directed at the right audience. The limiting factor in business today is not IT, but people's ability to exploit it. I think that this has been true for a long time now !
Excellent overview to ensure business embraces technology (1/2 people found this helpful)
This book provides an excellent overview of how a business needs to adapt its internal business systems to survive, adapt and embrace the latest technology. It is written in a non-technical way which makes it ideal for non IT managers.
Can the World's Foremost Copier Be a Visionary? (0/0 people found this helpful)
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.
This book is a must to get the grey matter working (1/1 people found this helpful)
For the budding entrepreneur or business man this is a must. All CEOs,directors should have it as a bible.
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Books -> Subjects -> Business, Finance & Law -> Management -> General AAS
Books -> Subjects -> Business, Finance & Law -> General AAS
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