Business @ The Speed of Thought
   Bill Gates with Collins Hemingway
  1999 Warner Books NY USA
   ISBN: 0446525685


Like a living organism, a company functions best if it can rely on a nervous system that instantaneously delivers information to the parts that need it. In clear, nontechnical language Bill Gates shows you how a digital nervous system can do this.

Well, I read it. I got Business @ The Speed of Thought out of the library three different times. I read page after page & dipped here & there. I am no CEO of a fast, innovative company on the cutting edge of commerce. Most of what Bill Gates says goes over my head. Way over!

I do, however, enjoy the way he puts out his information! The snippets I do get are lucid & in ordinary language. As ordinary as using a digital nervous system is ordinary!

I once lived in Portugal for a year. All my life I'd listened as Mother & her sisters chatted in Portuguese when they didn't want us children to understand. They forgot we learnt both Latin & French at school, so we could piece together what they were saying. It was very different, however, when I lived in Ericeira & everyone was speaking their mother tongue with no English frames of references. It took me all spring before I was no longer translating in my brain & was, in fact, thinking in Portuguese.

The same happened when I learnt Pitman's Shorthand at secretarial school. Suddenly, three months into the daily grind of hours of dictation & translation, I got it! Immediately my speeds in shorthand & typing, took off like a greyhound out of its slot.

Must I peruse & ponder Business @ The Speed of Thought for a season before I get it? Probably & especially as I am not running a business to which I need to apply the givens in this large type, thickish book.

I like the way Bill Gates & Collins Hemingway have written an interesting workbook for anyone curious about how the richest nerd in the world thinks. I smile in response to his grin & enjoyed his book. I was mollified that I already knew much of this stuff, which is, basically, good business practice & common sense.

Has anyone read this one?
(09/05/99)

Rebecca