Which 1999 book did Bill Gates co-write about technology transforming business?

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Bill Gates co-wrote the 1999 book Business @ the Speed of Thought about technology transforming business.

The book presents Gates’s argument that digital information systems could improve how organizations communicate, make decisions, and respond to customers. It focuses especially on the use of networked computers and what Gates called a “digital nervous system” for business.

Business @ the Speed of Thought was written with Microsoft executive and speechwriter Collins Hemingway. It followed Gates’s earlier book, The Road Ahead, which was first published in 1995 and discussed the emerging information age. The two titles are sometimes confused because both examine how computing would affect society and business.

The book appeared during the rapid expansion of the internet and was published in numerous languages. Its central ideas reflect the late-1990s technology environment, before cloud computing and smartphones became commonplace.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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