A look at what’s to come in 2024 for TNBR

Megan Dickman-Renard

Staff

July 26, 2023

We’ve had a busy start to 2023 at The Business News, and we’ve been proud to bring you the latest business news and topics directly to your mailbox every other Monday.

One new initiative this year, which we hope you’ve enjoyed, is our quarterly publication – The NEW Business Review (TNBR).
Designed with the intention of collecting and amplifying local thought leadership in mind, we’ve been energized by the wide range of voices and industries we’ve been able to curate for this publication.

Though we have two more topics yet this year – covering Technology & Evolution in Q3 and Evolving in the Market in Q4 – our first two topics provided a breadth of conversations surrounding “New Beginnings” and “Employee & Talent Development.”

From discussions about the role AI plays in our workplace communication and conceptualizing time and place when starting a business, to creating culture that encourages talent retention and leveraging technology to hire new employees, we’ve heard from local business and community leaders thinking through topics directly impacting business locally, nationally and globally. 

In a similar vein, we are looking to capture topics for 2024 that are placed at the precipice of concepts impacting businesses throughout the Northeast Wisconsin region.

As always, we aim to select topics that are pointed enough to unify around a particular theme but broad enough that they can be interpreted through the lens of any industry.

Furthermore, we are announcing all four topics for 2024 at once so that anyone interested in submitting an idea or abstract for a particular topic has time to do so.

If you are interested in submitting a column on any of the 2024 topics, please email megan@thebusinessnews.com.

Please include background on your idea and the quarter that you would like to be considered for. We will approve all contributors on a rolling basis starting in August of this year. 

We are excited to announce the topics for our 2024 series of The NEW Business Review, which are: 

 Q1: Place & Purpose Q2: Sustainability & Managing Resources Q3: Building Capacity & Scale Q4: Harnessing Change
Place & Purpose
Our Q1 topics are always geared toward an opportunity for self-reflection as a business or community leader.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted ideas surrounding place, more specifically how people conceptualize the workplace and its functionality, as well as how remote or hybrid remote workforces play into the general labor market.

For this topic, we are looking to capture ideas at the intersection of place and purpose, including topics such as: remote work, building culture in a remote workforce, commercial real estate, coworking or collaborative spaces, startups and the impact of location, urban versus rural spaces, location-based resources, digital spaces and the role of location in defining a business or individual sense of purpose.

This is not a comprehensive list, but this hopefully illustrates the range of ideas that could fit within the topic. 

Sustainability & Managing Resources
Our Q2 topics are generally aimed at an internal reflection on a business or organization and a strategy related to its development.

Sustainability is top of mind for many businesses and an ability to manage resources effectively and efficiently is often key to successful operations.

Topics for this quarter could include: sustainability, environmental impact, carbon emissions, energy, electric vehicles, alternative energies/fuels, managing people resources, managing product, managing processes to create efficiencies and optimization.

Again, while not comprehensive, this topic has a variety of lenses through which it could be viewed.

Building Capacity & Scale
Our Q3 topics tend to reflect ideas related to how a business or organization interacts with customers, clients, other businesses or other markets.

Issues related to scale, growth and capacity are topics that small-, medium- and large-size businesses and organizations encounter in one way or another, and one of the most challenging aspects to growing a business can be mastering scale.

For this quarter, some appropriate topics could include: growth and scale, organizational development, development of departments and inter-/intra-departmental strategy, changes to service or product offerings, increasing or shifting capabilities, new and emerging markets or market positions, technological advancements, fiscal and legal issues related to growing or scaling an organization and topics related to how to scale an idea.

There are many ways this topic could be interpreted, from a broader business or organization lens to industry-specific lenses in finance, manufacturing, communications, food production, healthcare and beyond. 

Harnessing Change
Q4 topics serve as a conceptual jumping-off point for businesses and are intended to be a topic worthy of consideration while developing strategy for the new year.

Harnessing change can be interpreted in a number of different ways, across a wide variety of industries and perspectives.

But the crux of it is that instead of responding to change, we’re interested in showcasing business and community leaders looking to use change to their advantage or leveraging situations where they are leading change – think of it as playing change-offense instead of change-defense.

Here, there are many ways in which the topic could manifest – from embracing change and incorporating it into a strategy to leading entry into a new market or a new way of doing business; to disrupting pieces of markets or entire industries; to simply implementing strategy to meeting change head-on rather than following its lead.

We have some truly empowering change-makers in Northeast Wisconsin and how we embrace change as a region will help us navigate whatever future comes our way – or whichever one we create. 

Stay tuned…
In closing, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has read, enjoyed, shared, contributed or advertised in The NEW Business Review.

The publication itself is near and dear to our hearts here at The Business News, and it showcases a little of what makes Northeast Wisconsin so innovative and special.

If you have an interest in contributing to one of the topics above – feel free to send an email about your idea to megan@thebusinessnews.com.

If you’re interested in advertising in a publication that showcases regional innovation, please consider supporting us.
Our 2024 series will be just as vibrant as the first, and we believe these topics will help us capture a broad range of ideas coming to fruition in our area – and all industries are welcome.

In the meantime, please keep an eye out for our upcoming Q3 publication, arriving in September, on Technology & Evolution, and, as always, thank you for reading!