Luisa reminds me of Debra & Joanna in how they were rather abrasive/rude in their approach. But both Debra & Joanna learned from their mistakes. Luisa has not.

Sugar likes Luisa's energy and willingness to just do stuff and take risks - they're good qualities in an entrepreneur. The likes of Sugar, James Dyson etc didn't make their millions by being safe.

However, as a business investor he is also looking for two key things:

1. A good business idea - the jury's out on this until we know more about the business plans

2. Someone who can be resourceful and self-sufficient (which Luisa is) but also easy to work with (which she isn't).

Venture capital investors or those involved in mergers & acquisitions always look at the business plan and the numbers, but they also consider the people they're signing up to work with. When such ventures/acquisitions fail, it's usually not because the business plan or strategy is wrong, it's because the people and cultures can't work together.

I don't think there's any doubt that Luisa would be a handful. She's headstrong, works poorly in teams and isn't receptive to advice. Sugar is probably wondering at this stage if she is more trouble than she is worth. If you look at the two most recent winners, both Tom and Ricky showed themselves to be willing to learn and grow - I don't get that sense from Luisa.

Luisa behaves like a spoilt teenager a lot of the time. When Nick was pointing out last night how rude she is she just rolled her eyes and you could see her thinking 'yeah, whatever'. If she'd had bubble gum she'd have blown it in his face.
A big part of business is having good interpersonal skills which Luisa clearly lacks. She is abrasive, bad mannered and gets in people's faces. She has obviously annoyed and irritated Nick and Karen and I doubt that AS has formed a great impression of her either.

I am laughing at the idea of people in their fifties being knackered and past it. Seriously?

LAS is always comparing his ratings with Piers Morgan so that may be a factor lol! I think Lisa is competent as a business person but sometimes is way too ruthless. f she can learn to be a little more tactile then she has potential.

I agree - I think it's becoming more and more obvious that there are certain candidates who are safe from elimination until the final stages because they make good TV, in the eyes of the producers.
In the real world I think Luisa would've burned her bridges with LAS ages ago.
On a side note, I didn't know what to make of Karen asking to follow her next week - was she saying her judgement of Luisa would be better than Nick's?

It's hard to tell from the just the show but i'm still in two minds about Luisa. She seems to have a fairly poor attitude however I agree with a lot with the things she says. As someone that works in business myself, I agree that a lot of the talk is basically a waste of time and that we obsess about concepts like 'team work' or 'leadership' without really understanding them. Luisa seems to cut through a lot of that and has a clear idea of how to get things done.

She's yet to understand though that you do have to 'play the game' to an extent in order to get on.

I think it was just her way of saying she'd marked Luisa's card.

Much though it pains me to say it, Luisa does have some attractive entrepreneurial qualities: she is confident, decisive and will take quick action. Whether those actions are the right ones is debatable, but thus far her instincts have been decent (like not spending a fortune on the chocolate-making activity in the awayday task).

However, her interpersonal skills are shocking. She thinks her ideas are always right, she doesn't stop to listen to team members whose preferred thinking style is to think first and speak second (as we saw with Jason last night) and she has zero empathy.

Putting ratings appeal aside, I can actually understand why Sugar has kept her so long - she does show some get-up-and-go, which is important in the partner he is looking for. However, where she will fall down is in being too difficult to work with. Sugar wants someone who can be self-sufficient (which she is) but also won't be a right royal pain to work with (to use Luisa's own words: epic fail). Why would he want to put his money into someone who he suspects won't listen to him?

I tend to agree. The teamwork aspect is certainly less important in this new format, where what Sugar is really looking for is entrepreneurial drive (which Luisa definitely has) and a good business idea.

But Luisa's poor interpersonal skills have clearly raised some flags with Sugar, Karren and Nick, who see her as headstrong, a poor listener and difficult to work with. That's not really what you want in a business partner, is it?

I agree that some of her ideas aren't bad ( I did think though, that she should've let Neil do the pitch last night, as she ended up floundering a bit), but she really needs to learn some humility and some empathy, imo.
I'd like to think that by the end of last night's episode, she'd realised she'd gone too far with her treatment of Jason, but think her brief moment of doubt was probably more due to the fact that her coup appeared to have backfired on her.

Luisa sets off on the wrong step when she walks in and says "Hi Guys" to the top business people. They demand respect because of the positions they hold and several of them were quite put out by the familiarity.

It is only a small detail but it immediately put her on the back foot and her pitch suffered from then. She does it every time she pitches and they dont seem to like it.

I also think she should have let Neil do the pitch, but she's shown herself to be a good enough presenter in the past that it wasn't a crazy decision. Where she stumbled I think anyone would have struggled - it was hard to say anything positive to defend their barely there website.

Humility and empathy? She absolutely would benefit from learning those. Although there are many business leaders who get away with very little of either!

Sadly I doubt the message has got through to her. There wasn't much between the two teams last night - obviously the edit played up Evolve's errors more than Endeavour's - and I do genuinely wonder if the palace coup was the ultimate reason Sugar decided he had to declare Evolve the losers of the task, so he could take appropriate action in the boardroom. No proof, just a theory.

Agreed. It's over-familiar and exactly what Stuart Baggs was pulled up for at the beginning of his interview with Margaret Mountford when he strolled in and casually addressed her by her first name.

Yes! When Nick let her have it with both barrels, saying he'd never seen such a display of rudeness in his life, I almost gasped. I've never heard him blast someone so unequivocally. I expected Luisa to crumple, as no doubt did Nick - but as you say Swanandduck, she didn't bat an eyelid! I didn't know whether to be annoyed or amused, but it was brilliant telly.

Even more telling was that Sir Al didn't comment on it. Normally he'd say something about how much he valued Nick's opinion, but he just let it pass. It was a revolutionary moment in its own little way. And I think it shows there's something in what the OP says.

It was a pretty savage attack by Nick, who obvious dislikes her.

Sugar certainly likes her fire and her potential.

This is a competition after all - if I was outthought or outfought i'd have respect for that person.

I do think she is arguably more master than apprentice, someone like Neil will be a better cog in a company machine. I give her very slim chance of winning, but admire her as the strongest candidate (imo).

Not necessarily I wouldn't read too much into Sugar's non-reaction.We weren't shown one, but that's not to say he didn't say anything. (It would be most unlike him not to have said anything!) Ultimately the boardroom narrative was about Jason, not Luisa, so there was no need to lay it on too heavy.

But the prize isn't to be a cog in a company machine - it's to set up a business with Lord Sugar as investor and partner. Big difference. It will all come down to who has the best combination of business idea and a personality which combines the drive to be an entrepreneur with being the kind of person that Sugar feels he can work with.

So far Luisa has shown entrepreneurship but also that she is difficult to work with and doesn't listen to anyone other than herself. As such, her chances of winning are indeed slim.

You are right of course about the role. I guess what i'm saying is that Luisa 'needs' to be the head honcho, whereas Neil looks more comfortable being led.

Of course people will disagree on whether she deserves to a leader or could be one effectively. I think she's a clear and independent thinker so i'd support the idea, but obviously she is still 'raw'.

I suppose I should describe her as the strongest contestant, rather than the strongest candidate. She's not the most likely to win.

I think Neil has shown that he can contribute both as a leader and as a mere team member - he's become less back seat driver-y in recent tasks and I actually thought he behaved very reasonably in the day 1 debrief, getting to the nub of the issue and supporting moving towards a decision they all agreed on. He also didn't try to take over from Francesca on the directing front, accepting that she was better suited to it (although, based on the final ad, I'm not so sure!) and that there needed to be one voice leading that part of the task.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't like Luisa because of her abrasive nature - she would benefit from just listening to people occasionally without assuming that she's always right - but she has often shown the urgency, decisiveness and confidence that any entrepreneur needs.

Agreed on Neil, and i'm not suggesting he's an outright sheep at all - I do see him as a team leader.

But ultimately he'll respond better to someone like Sugar vetoing him. Luisa would just shrug everything off - like she has both Karen and Nick. She believes her way is best, for better or worse.

She'd do well to listen a bit more, but she's a strong character.

I second all that - except I drink Bushmills or Black Bush rather than a Tesco own brand whiskey!

Agreed

Agree, a reaction could have been cut - but it would have been quite a bold decision on the editor's part. The board team present a united front, and Nick's berating of a contestant would usually elicit some response from Sir Al - whatever the, er, boardroom narrative.

You have a point and you may be right, but obviously we can't say for sure one way or the other. I immediately filed it under "couldn't be bothered, cut to the chase" but from Karren's comment at the end - which Sugar seemed to be happy to nod through - it's clear that Luisa is not off the hook. While Sugar does make up his own mind, he definitely does value Nick and Karren's views as they are the ones who see the candidates in action. I'm sure the fact that Nick was so vehement in his criticism - unusually for him - will have registered.

It was a surprisingly forceful reaction from Nick who is normally quite dry and restrained in his criticisms of candidates. He was obviously completely disgusted at Luisa's behaviour and has no time for her any more. That must surely have some effect on LS?

Reading between the lines, I suspect that what Nick saw was not the one or two isolated incidents we saw in the episode, but a constant badgering of Jason by Luisa based more on the fact that she thought she knew better than the specific example of him dithering over colours.

While her frustrations were understandable, she wasn't exactly constructive in her feedback, was she? Hurry up, hurry up, we don't have time, you're giving me a headache. She could have achieved far more by offering useful suggestions or asking what she could do to support him or offering considered ideas. She should certainly have recognised that her PM was struggling and found ways to support rather than undermine him. If you have a weak teammate, telling them they're crap is unlikely to help.