If Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates played technology visionary in his 1995 bestseller, "The Road Ahead," in his latest book he takes on a new role as management guru.
Since Gates is arguably the richest, most successful executive ever, businesspeople around the world will no doubt pick up "Business @ the Speed of Thought" (Warner Books) to hear his advice.
The book is built around Gates' notion of the "digital nervous system," the corporate equivalent of a human nervous system. Gates argues that the system, built of networked computers, should enable a company "to perceive and react to its environment, to sense competitor challenges and customer needs and to organize timely responses."
It's an apt metaphor, and Gates is right when he argues that companies must do a better job of getting a proper return from the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on computer technology.
Only by collecting the correct information and distributing it broadly throughout the corporation, he argues, can employees have access to the data they need to make specific proposals to improve performance.
The nervous system must also pass bad news up the management chain. Offering rare insight into his dogged attention to detail, Gates says he is suspicious when he gets e-mail about some sales victory.
"I've found there's a psychological impulse in people to send good news when there's bad news brewing," Gates writes.
But Gates' push for management guru status comes just as Microsoft is making a major push to sell the profitable database and networking software that are core components of any digital nervous system. Although details of Microsoft's offerings are in the appendix rather than the body of the book, the book nevertheless often reads like very sophisticated promotional material.
Gates writes, for example, about how he was blind to the early importance of the Internet. In 1993, Microsoft's Internet site was three computers on a folding table, with duct tape holding electric cords in place, which a fire marshal tried to shut down as a hazard.
An e-mail campaign by a few Internet enthusiasts in the company created a "firestorm of electronic deliberation" that finally resulted in Microsoft's dramatic commitment to the Net in 1995. E-mail, Gates suggests, was the critical catalyst.
