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Business @ The Speed of Thought: Succeeding in Digital Economy (平装)
by Bill Gates
| Category:
Management, Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship |
| Market price: ¥ 178.00
MSL price:
¥ 168.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
World's top entrepreneur and executive's strategic business thinking from the technology perspective. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 12 items |
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USA Today (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
A road map for managers… effectively walks the reader through the business and life improvements the wired worlds presents… Plenty of specific tips and advice. |
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Christian Science Monitor (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
For business people, companies, or even individuals who want practical advice from an industry leader about how they might move forward in a changing environment, Gates’s latest effort is well worth reading. |
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Fortune (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
A textbook for business decision-makers who are interested in using information technology. |
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Siddahanti (MSL quote), India
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Bill Gates, the whiz kid, IT Czar, has come out with a thought provoking, very educative, and very informative book that can easily be understood easily by everyone. Few chapters are bit technical, but one can make broad sense out of these chapters too. Reading the book has been a profound and very satisfying and rich experience for me.
Gates advocates complete digitalization of all aspects of life, and expounds a theory of Digital Nervous System, which envisages paperless offices, on-line, real-time transactions in a totally networked environment in a web based work style.
Gates talks about web-lifestyle, knowledge management, empowerment down to the last person in line, pooling and sharing of information on line which then becomes the bank of knowledge for everyone to access. He gives numerous examples of the applied digitalization in various Corporations, Government organizations, Schools & Educational institutions, US Armed forces etc. that have reaped enormous benefits of the same.
The entire concept, as well as the benefits thereof have been explained in detail, which make excellent sense and are very convincing. I got great insights into the scope and extent of improvements that the networked environment and total computerization can bring about, especially in a country like India where there is so much to be done! We haven't even started yet. I am happy that, irrespective of the current downtrend, my kids, who are into computers, will never be unemployed!
Master salesman that Bill Gates is, he doesn't let any opportunity go by without extolling the virtues of Microsoft and it's various products, makes a sales pitch here too, and subtly hints that ultimately the entire world should operate on a Windows platform.
All this is fine, but I have a few scary scenarios, which frighten me, every time I read a book like this:
1. Given the fact that hackers are penetrating most secured sites and databases, Banks are being defrauded, passwords and PIN codes are stolen, dangerous viruses are around which manage to jump all high security firewalls.... there is an unknown, invisible enemy lurking around out there somewhere, in such a situations, how can we surrender all our data, info, knowledge, records and secrets to a digital warehouse which doesn't have any physical protections, locks or impenetrable barriers of security and safety?
2. A virus, malfunction, or any such thing can wipe out the entire record....how and wherefrom do we retrieve and recreate the record? And at what cost?
3. The cookies, embedded software, firmware, middleware, or even parts of hardware can make any PC, any Server accessible to any one person, agency or an institution like Intel, MS, or CIA, and they will have the power to intrude and disable or self destruct your machine...then what? One electronic signal can bring an entire country , any selected institution like a Bank to a grinding halt...then what? Maybe I have read too many conspiracy theories of Ludlum, but then the possibilities exist!
4. A strong electromagnetic wave, radiation, grid failure etc, can cause a total, breakdown...there is no parallel system to keep things going, the old working style in the name of "legacy" has long back been disbanded, then what? We see this chaotic scenario for IA ticketing every time the Indian Airlines system crashes.
5. Any other software problem like the Y2k Bug, can once again create a havoc… then what?
6. Complete digitalization and digital nervous system on a national scale, obviously will need a battery of experts and dedicated specialist who alone can keep the thing going… If they go on strike? We have seen Air traffic controllers, Doctors, Postal workers, Teachers, Petrol Bunks, and Chemists going on strike and holding the society to ransom, but can we afford the digital experts bringing the complete country to a dead halt?
In an organization where I was working, we had gone completely digital "officially",( but privately we maintained physical paper records), I have practically experienced the chaos every time the centralized mail server crashed, many hard discs got wiped out in my department...it was a total mess! No records...and auditors were breathing down our necks! The private records saved us. Thereafter we decided that we may have a paperless office, but there will be a parallel office for paper!
We still have a long way to go to make things fool proof, absolutely trustworthy and reliable, safe and secure... till that happens I don't think we can create a paperless World! Till that time Bill Gates you have to wait atta boy! |
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Jacques Couladeau (MSL quote), France
<2006-12-26 00:00>
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 inescapable, 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 pass, 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 innovation and democracy in its everyday functioning and concentrating on the core issues and activities necessary 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. |
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Jeremy (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Discussing the digital flow of information in a company would sound to some like a horrible book to read. Not so, with this book. Gates finds simply analogies to explain why the flow of communication is so important and how managing electronic information can be made not only efficient, but simple. His enthusiasm comes through clearly as he reveals not only his twelve steps to manage digital information, but also the practical applications of flow management. I found this book easy to understand and very helpful at pointing out ways to better manage my own email and the ways I communicate information to committees and employees. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
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. |
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V. Srinvas (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Excellent book on using the Information Technology within your company to succeed. This book is not about trends of Information Technology industry but about trends of IT usage. The basics of handling information and how the digital nervous system help out modern businesses achieve maximum out of their means are the key themes explained with convincing precision.
This is a very useful book for all those who want to know how Information Technology usage can change the businesses and how the business intelligence can be created through digital nervous system to get the edge over competitors. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
I learned a lot from this book. Mr. Gates, the inventor of the computer and the internet gives his thoughts about the future of business. In the future, toasters won't burn our toast unless we want them to. In the future, we won't have to think because Microsoft will do the thinking for us. Microsoft will download their new OS onto our computer and bill us instantly. Great times ahead and I know everything Mr. Gates does is in my best interest as a business and a consumer. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Thinking that it only relates to the IT industry? If yes, then it's the same wrong assumption that I made in the beginning, because in reality it turned out to be a solution which can be applied for any company in any industry.
Facing tough questions such "How can we compete against organizations bigger than ours worldwide" or "How can we still remain big and agile across our different markets without loosing market share?" (in the case of a big corporation) and finally "How to be ahead in the game by Innovating constantly?"; then this book treats the fundamental issues which enable an organization to become more efficient regardless of the size of its assets, the nature of the industry and the degree of competition in that same industry. |
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1 2 | Total 2 pages 12 items |
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