Business @ the Speed of Thought : Using a Digital Nervous System

Rating:
Summary: A Solid Effort!
Review: "Words are like leaves; and where they most abound / much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found," wrote Alexander Pope, hundreds of years before critics said roughly the same thing about Bill Gate's Business @ the Speed of Thought. But when the words in question come from the pen of Microsoft's chairman, businesspeople and technophiles the world over rush to read them in search of whatever enlightening morsels might be hidden within. Indeed, the strength of this book, which sometimes reads like a Windows operating manual, is not in the grace of its prose. Rather, its value lies in the glimpse it gives of the world through the eyes of one of its richest and most influential men. As Gates sees it, the migration of data to the electronic state from paper was the seminal event of our age, and his book gives his take on its implications - hardly an irrelevant picture coming from the head of the world's dominant software company. We at getAbstract recommend this book to any executive charged with developing a digital strategy.

Rating:
Summary: prepare for millennium 3 with this book
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The bible of High technology management
Review: Great book by great man. I would say the way Gates presented his thoughts by real-life examples is extra ordinary. I think great men like him should always write books like this.

Rating:
Summary: Simple, but Sweet!
Review: OVERVIEW

Business at the Speed of Thought is far more than a position paper on his business strategies, nor is it a public relations effort to soften the critics or judiciary overseers. The book takes a higher conceptual approach, focusing on the imperative role of information and knowledge management will play in running today's organizations. Gates speaks as a consultant, using the successes and failures of real companies, in a case-study approach, to support his philosophies and strategies. It is more basic than revolutionary, but the vision is expressed with great clarity and given depth and breadth through pragmatic, working examples.

CEO's, other organizational leaders, and managers at all levels can potentially benefit from the ideas illustrated. As a small business owner, I found at least half of the content relevant to improving the efficiency of my business operations. Further, those who believe that technology will continue to play an increasingly significant role in the marketplace, should grab a cup of coffee, a pen, and actively read this book.

The book is organized into four distinct sections: information flow, commerce, knowledge management, and business operations. The author's basic premise is that the success or failure of an organization will depend on how well they gather, manage, and use information. Gathering information is the first step in this direction. Gates observes the importance of gathering "business facts", which encompass internal as well as external forces. These business facts concern customers, vendors, distributors, competitors, and internal systems and procedures.

DISCUSSION

While Gates coherent 12-step program to the implementation of a "Digital Nervous System" is a useful guide to better integrate IT with existing business resources, it unfortunately gave little attention to much deserved social and psychological issues. Gates refuses to admit any problems with technology. This technological utopianism results in an incomplete analysis and does not discriminate at all. As a result, the potential pitfalls are not identified, which could lead to oversight. Functionally, it may lead to a blind, non-discriminatory adoption to digital processes. This absolute change to may produce the inefficiency it is meant to eliminate.

Under this approach, the problems fade into the background because the technology is so perfect. For example, Gates insists that communication flow through the organization over e-mail so that you can act on news with reflex like speed. It is difficult to take a 'key step' like this seriously. Is the ability to act with 'reflex-like speed' really a function of the communication medium, or is it dependent on such factors as experience, intelligence, etc.? Is there no downside to e-mail? What of the lack of truly human communication, that is, fact-to-face, if e-mail is used for all communication? Is it surprising that chief executives fly around the world almost continuously to talk face-to-face? Do they use e-mail, or do they prefer to see the whites of the potential partner's eyes?

Despite these criticisms, I enjoyed this book from cover to cover, and have used its content to increase the productivity of the technological resources owned by my business. Business @ the Speed of Thought illustrates its concepts with detailed case studies of top-notch companies as well as Microsoft in a variety of industries, making the "Digital Nervous System" relevant to a broad and diverse audience. He uses accurate yet easy to understand language, abandoning technical jargon. This, combined with an introduction which provides a clear layout of the books objectives, produces a coherent and pragmatic resource for all people, business persons and non-business persons.

The analysis within the case studies gives examples of how IT can improve, or did improve, failed processes. These examples of already successfully re-engineered information networks, provides concrete methods of how to manage inventory, sales, customer relationships, etc. Because Gates draws from a diverse field of companies, the advice of Gates is useful for all business people of all types of organizations, from service to merchandising, and profit to non-profit.

In addition, the concept of a "Digital Nervous System" can be applied to the personal lives of people who are adapting what he calls a Web Lifestyle. I concur with Gate's conviction that the success of businesses will be a function of how you gather, manage, and use information. Subsequently, Business @ the Speed of Thought goes a long way to increasing vital IT knowledge and skills; and these life-long skills are as important for personal, academic, and professional achievement as traditional academic knowledge and skills such as Math and Science.

CONCLUSION

While Gates breaks no new ground, he provides specific examples that illustrate the necessary steps to help businesses capitalize on their IT investment, and authentic examples of its realized benefits. I recommend this book to anybody who feels they are unclear on how to integrate IT with current business operations, as well as to individuals who desire to learn more about how to utilize technology to improve their personal tasks. I do not believe Business @ the Speed of Thought is just a finely tuned marketing campaign, but it may be hard for those who do not favor Microsoft to listen to Gates for the entire length of the book. In this case I recommend people read selected chapters that are in line with their individual or business IT objectives. As Gates has shown time and time again, him, Microsoft, and perhaps even this book you may ignore at your own peril.

Rating:
Summary: A Lesson to be Learned
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Mixture of obvious and bold foresight
Review: You could read much of this book and think to yourself: this is obviously where the future is going. Indeed I may be especially prone to this feeling of deja prevu, because my father first Norman Macrae of The Economist first wrote a book exploring the future scearios of a networked world of business and consumers back in 1984 - as a celebratory Goodbye to Orwell. But take another look, and ask yourself how many of Gates' lead recommendations are CEOs of big companies acting on or even fully knowledgable about. In telling them to wake up to the digital age or go out of business, his message is a bold call for action. Macraes would particularly enjoy debating with like minded readers examples of the best actions of the following types of Gatesian Do Nows: 1) The internet will help achieve "friction-free capitalism" by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other. ..Only a few businesses will succeed by having the lowest price, so most will need a strategy that includes customer service. If you take a service approach, arm your knowledge workers with digital information tools to connect with customers and manage those realtionships...Do you have a single infrastructure to support applications for your internal knowledge workers and your customers?....2) To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks. Risk supported by digital information flow may be the single biggest way to create product and market breakthroughs.3) Time to market is shrinking for every business...The most important "speed" issue is often not technical but cultural. It's convincing everyone that the company's survival depends on everyone moving as fast as possible...4) Knowledge management starts with business objectives and processes and a recognition of the need to share information. Knowledge management is nothing more than managing information flow, getting the right information to the right people who need it so they can act on it quickly...Do you have a digital repository where you preserve and augment your organisation's accumulated knowledge? Do your digital systems allow numerical and non-numerical data to be accessed together? Can employees, partners and suppliers get access to appropriate corporate knowledge with a few simple commands? Do your information systems ensure that proper reviews happen as products move through development?