These are the last group tasks and as has been the case for most of this year, there is still little new to learn in the world of business from this. However, it is still good entertainment.
As the weeks progress, the teams are more aware that they are competing to win overall rather than just competing to win the task and collaboration is not a good as it was at the start. Of course, winning the task guarantees staying in the process so this is probably a poor attitude.
They were asked to complete tasks that were just unreasonable in the time frame allowed. Two of the tasks were to create and brand a new hot sauce and to create a new fashion brand with three garments to pitch to retailers. They were supposed to do this in just one day. Added to that complication, they are often required to travel long distances to do the work which begs the question, how much of what they are doing “in one day” is actually in one day.
What is bothering me more is the lack of consistency in how things are judged. For example, in the hot sauce task, they needed to produce an advert for the product. One group failed to include the bottle of sauce in the advert and were, quite rightly, roundly criticised for it. However, when they produced an advert for their fashion brand, their designs had not been produced so didn’t appear in the adverts. Somehow, this doesn’t seem to bother anyone!
Alan Sugar’s decision making also leaves a lot to be desired. He decided to fire one person based on his instincts, which is never the best way of making a decision in business. He also lets some people stay in the process based on their overall success yet in episode 10, allowed a serial loser to stay wile firing a few more successful candidate for their one error in that episode.
This last decision deserves some further commentary. They had to produce a new fashion range; one team played it safe and produced some athletic leisure wear whereas the other team created a menswear range that was pushing the boundaries of what a man might wear. This is always a risky strategy and did not pay off as they received less orders than the team that played it safe. However, both teams pitched to 8 different retailers, the team that played it safe got orders from 3 of them, but in large volumes. The team that pushed the boundaries received orders from 6 of them but in lower numbers. While the objective was to get the most orders, this level of success was roundly ignored with the claim that they had not made a commercial enough product.
Finally, as these are the last episodes where candidates make products and pitch them to retailers, it is worth commenting further on the poor quality of most of these. Despite having time to prepare, they are generally disappointing. They make claims about how they have worked for such a long time to develop their product, even thought they did it in 2 days! They never try to engage with their audience or to truly understand the market that they are working in. It is definitely the area where the most improvement could be made.