Future Directions

The way to go…..

MICA is positioning itself as being the internationally preferred institute for communications management in the next five years. If anybody in the world wants to understand communications management vis-à-vis pure communications and wants to use communications relevant to the next half or the future half of the world, they ought to consider MICA for their needs. On the lines of Wharton and Harvard in the USA and IIM-A in India, for management studies, MICA is an institute of excellence for communications management.

MICA has matured and evolved into an extremely broad-based management school focusing on the marketing communications sector of industry in the last 15 years since its inception. Beginning as an extension of the advertising agency which created and founded the institute it has shifted its focus from client servicing, media planning, creative and marketing research, as required by the advertising industry, to address the needs in the communication industry by creating skill sets and mindsets that are willing to use the power of communications to influence businesses, societies, the communities they work in, bring about and influence behavioural change in consumers and use communications as a means of bonding between the provider of products and services and the users of products and services.

India is moving from a knowledge based society to an information and ideas based society. The key requirements for such a driving force is people, because it is people who generate ideas and decide what is to be done with knowledge and information. This has been recognized in the mission of the institute, which says, "to create innovative professionals for the practice, development and management of communications".

It is our desire to be the pre-eminent communications management school, training innovative professionals who would be effective in a fiercely competitive, choice-oriented kind of environment in every product, whether it is simple FMCGs, or services, or technology. Secondly, technology is going to evolve. It would require a better ability to understand, handle and analyze the huge amount of information and data that will now become available. A seamless kind of business environment would have to be created, which is not bound by geographical limits, etc. MICA is in the process of investing in data and information management for training future communication managers.

An effective B-schools teaches great resource management skills and processes. The effectiveness of systems and processes depends on the ability of people to generate ideas, understand people and absorb diversity, underpinned with the science of communications.

In the near future, another area that the MICA Governing Council is keen to invest in is advocacy. The development of society as a whole can be achieved using the management of communications through research and advocacy. Communications can be used to assimilate the less fortunate into the mainstream, and advocacy can be used to influence legislation, policy, government thinking in areas of technology, education, assistance, processes that would make India a much more influential group in the world. Communications can also be used to harness the capability of our bureaucrats and public servants.

There are several issues in the social and developmental sector. It is important to carry out some fundamental research on how to get results on social sector issues. MICA can provide the requisite communication models.

The MICAn, in the next five years is going to be somebody who is very innovative, with an approach to managing human and business issues, who is assertive with a burning desire to be a global citizen, therefore very adaptable, flexible, tolerant of cultural diversities and somebody who passionately believes that it is ideas in communication management that can make a difference.

Atul Tandan
Director