Most of the Apprentice candidates do this, but this isn't how entrepreneurs work in general. They think outside the box of their own experience and see gaps in the market to exploit. Richard Branson isn't a musician, airline pilot, or rocket scientist but he set up his business empire based on selling other people's music in a new way, then offering travel in a different style. His ideas are all about presenting things differently. Alan Sugar had no experience of anything except market trading, yet he built up a wide portfolio of technology and property companies.

Alex would have been offering other people's expert advice. Lawyers specialise and don't necessarily market themselves very well. There could well be room for middlemen like Alex to offer a range of legal expertise.

I stand by my comments!

Neither Helen nor Tom were solely responsible for winning/ losing the tasks .... It was just good luck for Helen and bad luck for Tom. Winning or losing was a joint effort, and in Helen's 3rd win- it was Toms idea and vision for the My Pye restaurant that swung it for them. Jim's amazing pitch on the biscuit task gave her the win on that one......

Most weeks she was just part of the scenery doing busy work in the background - apart from her PM episodes, the most memorable scene she had was standing mutely behind Zoe as she berated Susan in the beauty task.

Tom on the other hand was always seen fully participating in each task - forever writing notes and number crunching.

If anything Helen came really unstuck in the final stages as she proved she had no real entrepreneurial skill, her offering was for something already widely available in the market from other better connected and established suppliers. Tom had an idea for something completely new and innovative!

What you say is true, but the examples you give of more diverse businesses have been made by people who already have built large business empires with the infrastructure - and credibility - that goes with it. Sugar didn't move into property when he was 22 - he did it much later in his career. Similarly Branson had several smaller start-ups before he ventured into airlines etc.

That's my point with Alex. I'm not saying he couldn't do it - merely that from an investor's point of view he didn't exactly present a credible investment as someone who had jumped from business to business and was now moving into a completely new area. And, as media articles have revealed this week, his record as a small businessman is hardly spotless. His primary business was turning over £28k pa. That's not a business - he wasn't making enough profit to even pay his own salary.

Yes, but had they lost, Luisa's reluctance to use her talents wouldn't have pleased LS either.

Luisa was being tactical. She made sure Francesca was the only one in that kitchen because then if the task went sour she had an easy person to blame.

Karren noted this all throughout the task. Luisa clearly had sufficient food knowledge to have done a better job than Francesca did in the kitchen.

What about when she did the amazing pitch to the French retailer in Week 8?

doo doo doo Another One Bites the Dust

One outstanding moment in a 12 weeks does not "the best candidate ever!" make. Liz Locke from the year before was consistently good and in the forefront of the team each week - only to be trounced by Baggs!

as I said most weeks she was doing busy work in the background keeping her head down

An excellent reply to a rather odd post.

Luisa played a blinder in this episode, and it's a shame her detractors can't see past the dislike and be more objective.

Even Karen who last week had marked her card had to admit that she was seeing a real business person beneath it all.

As I always say about the Apprentice, you can always argue these things from more than one angle- I'd wager if she didn't say a word and meekly went and 'hid' in the kitchen because she was the best cook, then the criticism would be she was hiding after last week or keeping her head below the parapet. Damned if you do and damned if you don't!

If I was Luisa, there is no way I'd want to be stuck in the kitchen for the exact reasons you gave.The business end of the program is in the pitching, the branding, marketing etc etc, NOT who's better at peeling potatoes/ stir-frying some noodles etc.

Tactics and managing where you will be most effective/ less culpable is surely part and parcel of this whole 'interview' process surely?

This is the Apprentice, not Masterchef after all!

I'm watching on catchup now

Do my eyes deceive me?

I am seeing 'deadly dinners' as a name for a ready meal

With a big skull icon. in the middle of the label !!

Seriously i can't believe what i'm watching right now

Luisa (the cooking expert) put's a non-cooking person in the kitchen

Hey kids, come get your deadly dinner... it'll just kill you, but don't worry about the skull on the packaging, you'll be fine

I see what you're saying, but I think the issue is that Sugar thinks Alex needs to stick to one thing and get some solid knowledge behind him. Alex admitted himself that he needs to learn when to fight of his idea and when he's getting carried away with enthusiasm. So for Alex I'd say it was very good advice. Sugar didn't say every business person should stick to one thing he knows. Alex has had several good ideas and if he'd stuck to his idea this week I think he'd have won - but he didn't.

On the task itself, the wrong team won and Asda need their head examined to have bought anything on the promise the real thing would taste better. Neil, Luisa and Francesca were all ridiculously lucky to get away with that, they were appalling as a team, and they were just incredibly lucky that they were up against a team that would put a skull on food packaging. Miles pitched really badly his own idea, but I did like that he was willing to acknowledge he'd been wrong. We haven't seen much of that this year. It gets on my nerves when the Apprentice suggests that admitting you made a mistake is weak.

I think next year they need to rethink the food tasks. There are too many weeks where people are wasting their time cooking badly, as others have said.

Got be honest, I wouldn't give anyone still in £250.

I didn't say it did, I think she was consistently good throughout. I was merely objecting to your suggestion that she did nothing save for her PM weeks.

Indeed. He doesn't want a cook.

The marketing had to be most important this task because Lord Sugar wants to know who can spot a silly idea, who can run a business without being micromanaged, and who can sell their idea.

Its also late on when there are too few bodies to do cooking well, the teams aremost unbalanced and the task has a basic flaw that what one sub team tastes isn't ever available to the people actually cooking it. It would be amazing if it did taste the same and luck whether it ended up too spicy or bland unless someone with a lot of experience cooked it.

Neila nd Luisa both position themselves tactically. Luisa does it a bit better. You could perfectly well argue, though, that the important bit was to get the initial food choice right, and that was where your eating and cooking expertise needed to be. There was no point in having a better cook cooking something that was unsaleable anyway.

It isn't about not wanting a cook. Someone producing a food product has to be concerned primarily with how the food tastes, not what the package looks like. Hence the PM in real life would be at the food producers, not the graphics company. Of course, The Apprentice isn't like real life so it all hinged on branding as per usual. It's interesting how in the show they expect the candidates to do the cooking, yet they aren't expected to operate the graphics workstation. It would be much better if they had the use of a cook to make their ideas into reality.

Tom won last year by being an inventor of products, not a branding expert, who can be employed as an when required.

I definitely think Alex' team would have won had they stuck with his geography idea. Neil's team were incredibly lucky this week considering nobody who tasted their product actually liked it. Is Fran stupid? Not even tasting the food to know if it needed extra seasoning etc. is just ridiculous. And it's Interesting how it was Neil's "boring" speech that got the team the most orders of the series though. (Well the most alongside his pitch to argos in week 3 which matched it)

Myles was horrendous this task and was incredibly rude to Leah throughout, interrupting throughout her pitch and then basically telling her to shut up in the br. Although I did have to laugh at Leah saying she was the most consistent, reliable person in the process. What has she actually done again? I remember her doing well leading her sub-team in week 1 and of course the cooking this week but I don't remember anything else she's done.

But managing where she'd be most effective is exactly where Luisa failed on this task. It's all very well to say that the branding is the business end, but all their efforts on the branding were sabotaged by the poor product. They were very lucky that the other team came up with a concept the supermarkets hated.

Luisa made ultimately the same mistake Kurt did on the caravan task; she tried to personally impress at the expense of the team's overall effort. Had they lost, it would have been a travesty for Luisa not to be fired.

Tom won two years ago. Ricky won last year.

I completely take your points but on a tv show which this is, I disagree that she made the wrong choice, or failed on the task. In week 1, maybe this would have been an issue but at the latter stages, if you don't impress, or are seen to hide away, you're out.

Would she have been better than Francesca in the kitchen? Without a doubt.

Would the team been able to present/ market to the same level without Luisa? Probably, Neil would have been competent on this regardless of who was with him.

Would Fran have made any significant contribution if she was with Neil? For me, I have my doubts.

Do I think Luisa make a mistake by not going into the kitchen from an 'Apprentice TV show progression' point of view? Not in a million years.

Someone was going to have to be in the kitchen. For them to be accused of hiding away for doing so would have been absurd.

We have no way of knowing that Luisa would have done better in the kitchen. The task was to reproduce a meal which whoever was cooking had never tasted. Unless you were used to those two types of cooking and their spicing it would be largely luck whether you put too much or too little spice in. Luisa makes cakes - not Thai food. We have no idea either what they reasonably expected the chef provided to do for them.He should at least have made sure someone tasted the result and discussed how much spice to add. . We also have no idea whether Neil would have come up with something as edible, or marketable without Luisa - he would have frozen Francesca out, and he's made big errors before. We also have no idea what their meal tasted like when it was put together with the specialist chef originally. it may have been a brilliant dish, or not. We just know no one else got to taste that meal.

All we, and the contestants do know on the key issue is that more often than not, but not always, the taste doesn't matter if the marketing works, and Lord Sugar isn't going to want a cook - but someone who doesn't produce dud ideas and can market whatever they are proposing. If you have only three people and don't want to have, or be, Neil making the key decision alone , the weakest team member is going to end up in the kitchen.

What big errors? I can only remember his mistake in the Dubai task

I've just caught up to the Dating and the Dinners episodes - I've only been dipping in and out of this, my first series of Apprentice.

Newbie observations:
*I love Count Alex but it was right for him to go, he's too easily distracted - so far, I rather like his legal idea for the future.
*I thought the sidekick's comments about Luisa's appalling bad manners in the Dating episode entirely apposite: she just bitched and bitched, without offering a single alternative suggestion (in the edit we saw, anyway). Her attempt to shaft the non-cook member of her staff was equally appalling imho. All I can see is someone who will do what it takes for her own success, regardless of her team, regardless of the customer. Chilling.
*I'm also appalled (gee, I've been over-wrought :wink: ) that the winner of a food-related task should be the one with the marginally better packaging, despite the food tasting horrid, and the underlying fusion being apparently questionable.
Heyho. Glad I'm not a business-person!

If the food tastes horrid, you won't buy it again. If the packaging actively repels parents, you won't even buy it once.

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