CONNECTIVITY AND CONTROL IN THE YEAR-2000 AND BEYOND

By now, most executives are familiar with the famous Year 2000 problem - and many believe that their companies have the situation well in ha nd. After all, it seems to be such a trivial problem - computer softwa re that interprets ''00'' to be the year 1900 instead of the year 2000 . And yet armies of computer professionals have been working on updati ng code in payroll systems, distribution systems, actuarial systems, s ales-tracking systems, and the like. The problem is pervasive. Not onl y is it in your systems, it's in your suppliers' systems, your bankers ' systems, and your customers' systems. It's embedded in chips that co ntrol elevators, automated teller machines, process-control equipment, and power grids. Already, a dried-food manufacturer destroyed million s of dollars of perfectly good product when a computer counted invento ry marked with an expiration date of ''oo'' as nearly a hundred years old. And when managers of a sewage-control plant turned the clock to J anuary I, 2000 on a computer system they thought had been fixed, raw s ewage pumped directly into the harbor. It has become apparent that the re will not be enough time to find and fix all of the problems by Tanu ary I, 2000. And what good will it do if your computers work but they' re connected with systems that don't! That is one of the questions Har vard Business School professor Richard Nolan asks in his introduction to HBR's Perspectives on the Year 2000 issue. How will you prepare you r organization to respond when things start to go wrong? Fourteen comm entators offer their ideas on how senior managers should think about c onnectivity and control in the year zooo and beyond.