This year is a historic one for the National Institute of Design. Soon, It
will be completing its Golden Jubilee. It is also a historic year for the R&D
Campus because it marks the completion of first two years of the two new
PG programmes on ‘Design for Digital Experience’ and ‘Design for Retail
Experience’ which commenced in June 2007. It is with great pride that I will
watch 23 Students of the first batch graduating in the convocation.
The collaborative efforts and teamwork of all faculty members from our
Bangalore Campus and key faculty members from both our Heritage
Campus and PG Campus have helped us develop relationships with a large
number of Indian and international industries and academia.
I consider this as a success story especially for the reason that
approximately three years ago, we foresaw the need for such niche
programmes in the industry. Our forecast and vision have been proven
true. Despite the global recession, our students did not feel any adverse
impact in the market. This scenario portrays a demand for a specialized
workforce, and by extension, a demand for such specialized programmes in
emerging markets.
Today, potential business opportunities exist in the areas of providing
better interactive communication on robust platforms, offering
innovative direct or indirect value based products and solutions, providing
better ‘designed’ services such as health care, transportation, wastage
management, green- and eco-friendly endeavours. We are geared to take
on these upcoming opportunities.
I believe, there are possibilities of providing newer opportunities to a large
number of aspiring candidates in the newer emerging markets through
specially tailored design programmes which emphasize ‘design thinking’
to enable them to make an impact on future social, industrial and other
socio-economic clusters at a systems level.
These proposed newer and specialised programmes (both PG and shortterm)
in Design will ideally completely intertwine education with the
demands of and supports from the industry. The new programmes will also
focus on creating social and economic impacts by developing new avenues
and processes.
I am quite hopeful that we will be able to achieve this vision through
proper selection of aspiring candidates, mentoring existing faculty,
inducting newer faculty, and constantly interacting with willing technology
and academic partners in the industry and academia both at the national
as well as international level.
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