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Business @ the Speed of Thought
by Bill Gates
Published by Warner
1999
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
Salespeople who are struggling in their careers are often advised to study their company's most successful sales representative. The general principle, to study success, can be applied to almost any business endeavor.
In this book the world's wealthies entreprenuer sets forth his vision of a future in which information technology enables businesses to create a feedback system by which they can become more efficient and responsive, often in ways that could never even be imagined while confined to paper systems. Bill Gates is certainly qualified to make these sorts of predictions, considering that his entire fortune is based upon information technology.
Gates does not simply rest upon his reputation as the founder and CEO of Microsoft. He actively puts it to use throughout his discussion, regularly drawing his examples from his own personal experiences implementing these sorts of solutions at Microsoft. For instance, in explaining how using intranets to deliver information can increase efficiency, he describes the career of a hypothetical Microsoft employee, from the initial job application on. At every step, from selection through hiring to working, many things that were formerly done on paper are completed electronically.
Gates sees the computer as a transformative agent that completely changes how people do business. Instead of just doing the same things faster, we can now gain types of information that were previously impractical, and with them whole new levels of understanding about the processes in our companies.
Gates also devotes several special chapters to health care, government, the military, and education. In each he shows how computer technology has improved the ability of these organizations to respond effectively to crises and anticipate future ones, and to avoid waste and reduplication.
Computers are clearly the wave of the future. To ignore their power to transform the way we do business is to court disaster.
Click here to buy Business @ the Speed of Thought in hardcover.
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Click here to buy Business @ the Speed of Thought in abridged audio CD.
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Review posted April 10, 2001
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