I suspect that any dealer would tell them that he would need to see the rug. (Although I would have thought he'd be able to tell them the options). And because Philip had got it into his head that it wasn't worth anything he just didn't allocate time. Ben's lot just pitched too low.

What was stranger and really did show a complete lack of nous was then people were being told that the rug was too upmarket for the dealers it was being shown to and they still didn't twig that it was obviously worth a lot more than they thought.

I'm with Tern in that I think Sugar's brief was unclear. Irrespective of what the teams subsequently read in the detailed written briefing, we the viewer were certainly not able to judge the team's strategies without knowing for sure how they were ultimately going to be assessed.

I was quite confused when Margaret/Nick started reading out the final scores. I hadn't predicted the scoring system. And by no means do I consider myself a business dunce.

Thanks Tern for starting this worthwhile thread.... it's been interesting to read everyone's views.

Say a father died suddenly and his son inherited the stock, being new to the business.

In this unclear situation without explicit instructions his priority ought to be to hold firm and ascertain the different values of different stock. Without a clue on valuations he ought not to hope for the best flogging all the stock at any price anywhere, or he could have sold an Old Masters painting for ten quid.

Everything has a price. A son with leadership potential does not need to be told. Siralan was never taught how to turn £100 into £700 million.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here.

It looks to me as if you are joining the 'The teams should have instinctively known what to do' school of thought.

As I've pointed out many times that would be a monumentally stupid way to approach an apprentice task because The task is scored as the producers say it will be scored, and if you go off on your own thing - even if it would be the best strategy in reality - and the other team do as they were told, you will most likely lose.