Rating: 
Summary: Read it fast if you don't want to be behind times
Review: 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 Strange enough it makes us feel and think that the word « capitalism » itself is obsolete in global times. It is obsolete because the economy, business have to give each one member of the working team that the workers (at all levels) have to become and be for the economy to work,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
Rating:
Summary: The 1900s are dead, reshape your business to digital.
Review: This book is a great insight to how business should work. The old methods of manual filing and hand delivering is obsolete and computers are here to stay. Infortunely the majority of companies aren't taking their digital systems to their fullest advantage, and this is the book to learn how to do it right. Bill Gates will tell you how Microsoft consulted & built digital systems for various big name companies as well as the system they use internally. This book doesn't get technical but at the same time, it doesn't dable in too much "could have, should have, would have" as it sticks with actual impilimented systems. Any programmer/developer that wants to build or improve a companies intranet, or managers that want to mold their IT deptarment into something more productive than merely fixing printer problems and supporting legacy systems should read this as it will clue you in to what IT needs to do in today's world. This book also paves the way to where we are now as you can see the ideas expressed in this book have been executed in .NET and in the .NET related commercials Microsoft has created. This is the future, embrace it or be left behind.
Rating:
Summary: The 1900s are dead, reshape your business to digital.
Review: This book is a great insight to how business should work. The old methods of manual filing and hand delivering is obsolete and computers are here to stay. Infortunely the majority of companies aren't taking their digital systems to their fullest advantage, and this is the book to learn how to do it right. Bill Gates will tell you how Microsoft consulted & built digital systems for various big name companies as well as the system they use internally. This book doesn't get technical but at the same time, it doesn't dable in too much "could have, should have, would have" as it sticks with actual impilimented systems. Any programmer/developer that wants to build or improve a companies intranet, or managers that want to mold their IT deptarment into something more productive than merely fixing printer problems and supporting legacy systems should read this as it will clue you in to what IT needs to do in today's world. This book also paves the way to where we are now as you can see the ideas expressed in this book have been executed in .NET and in the .NET related commercials Microsoft has created. This is the future, embrace it or be left behind.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Read
Review: This is a good book that demonstrates how information technology can assist in achieving business objectives. It covers various aspects of organisational processes and is well written for easy comprehension.
Rating:
Summary: THE WORLD'S MOST INTELLIGENT MAN WRITES A BOOK
Review: This man definitely knows the future. After all, he's William Gates. Number one - he created the operating system that powers the microcomputer. Today, we all share either the desire or the reality that this computer should be in our homes. And they are. It is estimated that over one hundred million people in America today have personal computers in their home. Over ninety-five percent of them are operating Windows Operating Systems. Bill Gates owns a majority share of the company that innovated the creation of this infrastructure of not-only how-to where computers are going in the future, they also innovated the new Internet culture. It is my advice that you read this publication so you may have an understanding of how America's visionary thinks.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful
Review: We found the concepts in Gates & Hemingway (2000) "Business at the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy" interesting and helpful for business planning and development. Creating a "digital nervous system" seems a lofty ideal and a little too technical and impersonal though. We would have liked to see more business examples outside of the Microsoft examples they cited. What we also liked about this book is that it offers a brief glimpse into the mind and thinking of one of the most successful businessman in history. For anyone interested in business/leadership biography, this is a worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful
Review: We found the concepts in Gates & Hemingway (2000) "Business at the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy" interesting and helpful for business planning and development. Creating a "digital nervous system" seems a lofty ideal and a little too technical and impersonal though. We would have liked to see more business examples outside of the Microsoft examples they cited. What we also liked about this book is that it offers a brief glimpse into the mind and thinking of one of the most successful businessman in history. For anyone interested in business/leadership biography, this is a worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful
Review: We found the concepts in Gates & Hemingway (2000) "Business at the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy" interesting and helpful for business planning and development. Creating a "digital nervous system" seems a lofty ideal and a little too technical and impersonal though. We would have liked to see more business examples outside of the Microsoft examples they cited. What we also liked about this book is that it offers a brief glimpse into the mind and thinking of one of the most successful businessman in history. For anyone interested in business/leadership biography, this is a worthwhile read.
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