Love the rules, and an excellent observation about the vision becoming clouded. I also liked Duane, who seemed extrmely capable, but felt that this week – and also to a certain extent last week – he had tipped over from being merely confident to suffering from something of a God-complex, believing everything he thought and did was right. I feel he also made a mistake attacking Ricky, although the moment the latter brought Laura back he was doomed. If Ricky had brought in one of the other team members who had done little in the task – Nick, say – Duane could have effectively employed the ‘Gabrielle defence’ of questioning what they contributed.

I also feel very strongly that the way the task was judged was wrong. Like the Jim Eastwood/biscuits affair you mention, Stephen skewed the result by throwing in lots of free equipment to secure orders. This built sales but at the expense of sacrificing profit in what I understand to be quite a low profit sector because it is so competitive. In the real world. Stephen sold a massive loss-leader – in this task, he got away with murder by offering an unfair incentive – he might as well have handed over a brown paper bag full of cash.

I realise it’s a subjective view, but a quick straw poll last night suggests that the vast majority of people I know thought the wrong team had won. Inferior product concept, inferior sales pitches, inferior profitability, arguably a slightly better video. The wrong team one – and even Sugar admitted on Twitter last night he was ‘surprised’ Stephen’s team won, for which I think we can read that he thought the wrong team won too.

http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2012/04/19/the-apprentice-season-8-episode-5-keep-fit/

Both teams did well this week, I thought – as evidenced by their healthy profits – although I did prefer Tom’s well thought out strategy. He seemed to grasp that this task was unusual in that the teams did not have to buy all their stock in one go. As it was, he was able to send his sub-team out on day 2 to top up their stock, with the added insight of knowing what sort of stuff sold well. This minimised their risk well in terms of stock exposure. (Although I’m not sure about the quality of what was brought back.)

Laura’s strategy might have worked better in the real world, but too much of what the team did with their upcycling looked very amateurish (although some was very good). Over-spending is a cardinal sin in any start-up situation, and it’s what kills many businesses in the early days. Walk first, run second.

I haven’t seen You’re Fired yet, but my impression of Jane was that she is probably a very good MD in her own business, but didn’t really fit the mould of The Apprentice, where candidates need to be generally competent rather than very good at one specific thing. She had weaknesses in finance and general people management which were exposed here – but if you surround yourselves with people who compensate for your weaknesses and focus on exploiting your own strengths then they don’t matter so much. It’s a bit like being a footballer. Lionel Messi is a great forward, but he would probably be a lousy goalkeeper. He doesn’t need to be mediocre at everything when he is brilliant at what he does best!

http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2012/04/12/the-apprentice-season-8-episode-4-junk-shops/

It also strikes me that many of the skills you need to be successful in the tasks aren’t necessarily the skills you need to be a successful entrepreneur. Good people skills are generally vital in the tasks, but many entrepreneurs are unreasonable, petulant, demanding and make unconventional decisions that fly in the face of accepted business logic – Richard Branson and Steve Jobs would fall into this category, for instance.

Ultimately, The Apprentice is an entertainment show. And while it does teach us some basic business lessons, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the best performers on the task will win the investment under this new format. As in real life, good ideas are ultimately what matter the most.

But Lord Sugar is offering to invest a lot of his own cash, so it must also work as a means for him to identify and isolate the person he considers the best opportunity/risk. Michael clearly wasn’t it.

Fundamentally, given the low volume the trade team had to sell, their performance had no influence on the outcome of the task anyway – the gap to Sterling was simply insurmountable. No matter what Phoenix did, their low production volume meant Sterling only had to be vaguely competent in selling to ensure a win.

I’m in broad agreement with you about your assessment of the candidates too, although for now I rate Duane above Nick. Adam, Stephen and Jane are no-hopers, for sure.

I’m intrigued by Tom and Jade. We have seen comparatively little of each, but both have been quietly painted in a positive light (unlike, say, Jenna). In particular, we were shown Tom’s accurate dissection of Phoenix’s failure here – reminiscent of Tom Pellereau last year, who we saw week after week identifying his team’s errors and being completely ignore by his teammates.

Finally, I’ve long since given up on expecting Sugar to fire the person most responsible for a task’s failure. It’s clear he decides on instinct, but I also wonder whether he has already had sight of the candidates’ business plans, and has already formed an idea on which ones are credible investments and which ones are dispensible. It would certainly help explain why Tom P was never really in danger of being fired last year, despite his habit of alwyas being on the losing team.

http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2012/04/05/the-apprentice-season-8-episode-3-condiments/

http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2012/04/05/the-apprentice-season-8-episode-3-condiments/