Transforming Business Processes at the Speed of Thought

In 1983, Bill Gates was thinking about a strange problem in his office. His company, Microsoft, had just put out MS-DOS 2.0, its newest operating system, but something wasn't right. People were upset about how long it took to do simple things. Because Gates is known for having a sharp mind, he chose to time himself while opening a file. He was shocked when it took 17 seconds. He said to himself, "That's an eternity in computing." We would change the way we think about business processes and technology because of this small but important event.

In the year 2025, milliseconds are more important than ever. Flutterwave a company based in Lagos, Nigeria, manages millions of financial transactions daily. Flutterwave completes each transaction quickly. Flutterwave, which was started by Olugbenga Agboola and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji in 2016, has changed the African fintech scene by creating a safe and easy way to make payments. But how did we get from Gates' 17-second file opening to Flutterwave's lightning-fast transactions? Gates would later come up with the idea of "business at the speed of thought" as the answer.

Hacking exhibits the same pattern. As online risks become smarter, businesses are realising that their old, reactive ways of dealing with them are no longer working. "Zero Trust" security is based on the idea that no person or device should be trusted by default, even if they're already inside the network perimeter. The change from quick, instinctual trust to slower, ongoing proof is similar to the change from System 1 to System 2 that we saw in the NBA Finals.

Now, though, things get really interesting. We're unintentionally making new security holes as we try to make business processes faster. In 2024, some students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found something very strange. AI-powered trading systems that are supposed to make deals in microseconds were found to be vulnerable to a new type of hack that they called "temporal spoofing." By adding small gaps to market data feeds that users can't notice, attackers could trick these programs into making incorrect choices, which could make whole financial markets less stable.

This gets us back to Bill Gates and how he opened files in 17 seconds. In his 1999 book "Business @ the Speed of Thought," Gates said that digital technology would change the way businesses work in a basic way. He was right, but maybe not in the way he thought. The real change hasn't just been about speed; it's also been about finding the right mix between quick and slow thought, between gut feelings and careful consideration.

In the future, the most successful businesses will be the ones that can combine the two ways of thinking without any problems. They will make systems that can process huge amounts of data very quickly, like Flutterwave's payment infrastructure. These systems will also have tools for more in-depth, careful analysis. They will welcome the speed with which things are changing digitally while staying alert to the new types of threats that this speed makes possible.

As it turns out, speed dialling isn't the only way to make organisations better or faster. It's about making processes that can change between rapid and slow thoughts when they need to. It means realising that sometimes, like with the Cavaliers in 2016, the best way to win is to slow down on purpose.

The next time you find yourself stuck, remember Bill Gates and his 17-second file opening. That small break in the steady flow of information could be the break that recharges—the time to think that leads to real creativity. The slow runner can still learn valuable lessons from the fast runner in the race to transform business practices.