The thing I really don't understand is why the business plans aren't checked out in huge detail beforehand so they can choose candidates who definitely have a viable and potentially successful business plan. Obviously there will be some plans stronger than others but it seems to be a waste of time to put people into the competition only to come towards the end of it and realise that actually, that person's idea is not viable and won't be successful.

I mean look at Roisin and Solomon, they got all the way to the semi finals but it then turned out that their business plans were basically garbage so it felt like them being there and going through the process was just a complete waste of time as they were never going to stand a chance of winning. Same with Katie, who was probably up there to be a contender if this were the old Apprentice format of working for LS but as a business partner she stood absolutely no chance of winning.

Um, three? One of which he very clearly wasn't at fault for the loss.


Leaving aside the fact that Susan was actually the person who had a beauty business, Tom got the investment more because even with the flaws in his plan, he was the least problematic of the four finalists that we ended up with. Jim was a BS merchant and was never realistically going to win. Helen, as good as her track record was, had a horrible business plan and a lack of knowledge of how to actually operate a business start-up (people seem to forget just how bad she was in the Week 10 task). Susan had an otherwise good plan, but her financials indicated she would likely have blown the whole investment within months in a vain attempt to be the next Body Shop.

In fact, for all the talk there's been over the years about how Series 7 was obviously rigged for Tom to win, I actually think Susan was the person who Sugar wanted to invest in all along. But the problems were too glaring for him to overlook, and so he invested his money in a safe, proven choice and waited until Susan was ready to invest in outside the show.

Yes, basically The Apprentice is broken. And needs surgery.

The business plan prize hasn't broken the Appentice. It's barely changed it. The tasks still significantly matter. If you win a task you won't be fired. Most candidates that are fired are fired on task performance. So when people say the tasks don't count they are ignoring the obvious evidence otherwise. It's only later on that the merits of business plans start to be more important.

As for the idea Lord Sugar should not be allowed to consider the merits of the business plans before the interviews and only choose from whatever happens to be left, it's his money he's risking. Why should the rules of a TV reality show force him to invest in a choice of weak plans. Even with the job prize performance on tasks was just a guide. He chose who he thought was the best employee. It wasn't decided from the top two of a task performance league table.

Finally a job prize is now a non starter as Sugar isn't really able to offer business development jobs any more. Also there's a risk of another dissatisfied winner.

It isn't broken so it doesn't need to be fixed. The only thing I would want to see changed is a return to 16 candidates, cutting out the useless extra dead weight.

It's totally changed and the tasks don't matter. Ask Roisin.

The current version is an unstable mishmash of two different shows - the old Apprentice and Dragon's Den. One works against the other. I enjoy it through the tasks but the business plan element in the last two episodes leaves me cold as it doesn't relate to the previous 10 episodes.

So what exactly was Sugar supposed to do? Fire Daniel and Mark even though they had good business plans, and then tell Roisin to come up with a better plan by the following morning or else? Task performances have never been the be all and end all of who gets through the interviews (to say nothing of who Sugar hires), the change in the prize hasn't altered that one bit.

Also, I don't recall too many people being upset last year when Neil got fired for offering up a cack business plan despite his obvious ability.

You've just pointed out the problem with the show. It's not Sugar's problem, it's the structure of the show itself.

As others have suggested, have a business plan review at the very beginning of the series so that everyone in the show at least has a chance at the prize. Having good candidates there who have no chance of winning is a fundamental flaw. This is a production problem and the producers are at fault for not thinking it through.

Therein lies the problem - Lord Sugar not knowing the details of plans, other than the highlights makes more interesting TV so the producers have no reason to change the format. I believe after series 7 where I don't think there was any real vetting of the business plans that there is some screening of the business plan in the pre-show application process but obviously the producers want to put in varied plans and Sugar can't do anything about it because at the end of the day it is this that makes the show entertaining. Yes the process is flawed but it was flawed before the changes, the flaws are just more obvious and enhanced with the change of prize. At the end of the day it is a show to entertain as well as being business related, and I think they are doing a reasonable job considering.

I agree. Perhaps there isn't the need to check out the business plans in huge detail, but they could surely make sure that they are all viable propositions as far as LS is concerned. Some would inevitably have more appeal than others, but completely non-starters should be eliminated before the programme begins.
Going through weeks of assessing their leadership skills, their ability to adapt to different situations etc, becomes meaningless if their business plan does not stand up to even a few minutes scrutiny.
It does resemble Dragon's Den at the end, and the result would probably have been the same with respect to Roisin and Solomon. Roisin's idea would have been rejected because of scale and the size of investment required to get something like that off the ground. Solomon's idea was so vague, with so little substance, that I doubt any of the Dragons would have understood his plan anyway.
That's the big difference. Both Roisin and Solomon would have made excellent employees, obviously intelligent, with good people skills etc. But those attributes are not so important if you are assessing the merits of a business idea, and whether it's likely to be a long term, profitable success.
The blending of tasks that made some odd kind of sense when looking for a future employee, together with trying to find someone with a new, innovative business idea, doesn't really work.

I'd agree, but cite Katie as perhaps a better example. Roisin's plan had problems - not so huge as to be insurmountable, but fairly large, basic problems that would need addressing.

Katie, on the other hand, had performed almost as well as Roisin in the tasks, yet LS seemed to go out of his way to invent possible problems with her BP. It was clear he simply didn't want to invest in her restaurant as he would wait longer for a return on his money.

Katie may as well have stayed at home, because it is obvious what LS wants. Unless the format is changed to include a detailed look at the BP's before the tasks (preferably by an outsider) then we'll face ridiculous scenarios such as Katie's potentially- strong-but-lower-returns scheme voted out before Bianca's pipe dream and Solomon's doodles...

^^^ This. I don't usually quote entire posts but you put it so well.

I only hope that BBC Producers are reading this thread.

Spot on.

How can it be a waste, when you have watched all of it? The candidates all know what they're in for. All of them, except one will lose. Just enjoy it or switch off.

It's just for entertainment, same as Strictly, so yes, I guess it is a waste of time.

Anyway, LS knew exactly who he wanted to win. Do you think he is going to punt half a mil on a No hoping plan? No way, Mark was pegged from day 1 as the best of a bad bunch.

Yep, as you and others suggest, this is the solution. 16 good ideas and business plans to start with (even if they're given some pre-series coaching on how to revise their draft into a decent one so there's no Solomon debacle) and then the series is simply testing their application skills and the person behind the plan. Which is what they're aiming for now but which falls down at the end when the final two aren't necessarily the most impressive task performers (Bianca) or they ARE a good task performer but with an uninspiring idea (Mark).

It may mean we get 16 credible candidates and not the calamitous narcissists they select for 'entertainment' but the series coped with that in the early days. It may also mean tweaking tasks so that there's a greater range of entrepreneurial skills tested and less emphasis on that 'hard sell'/market trader/'bottom line' approach which too many tasks boil down to.

The only spanner in the works would be the interview episode, which is now only there to rubbish either their idea or the way they've presented it. But tbh, I didn't enjoy this year's episode and it used to be my favourite when it was a job interview . Firstly, cos Ricky Martin and the woman added no value IMO, and were a bit useless. And secondly cos I didn't like seeing great candidates like Roisin get decimated and joke candidates like Daniel get an easy ride.

If they're going to keep the interview episode, then the interviewers should be business experts scrutinising the plans like the dragons would on Dragons Den. Picking apart the detail and the viability. Not doing half-baked psychoanalysis or bullying them.

Failing that, replace Sugar with another credible business bigwig who's prepared to revert to the original concept. But tbf, he's a big part of the show's appeal. There's a huge risk we'd end up with another Donald Trump.

Everybody is right that the format doesn't quite work and that Roisin, Solomon and to a greater extent Katie, went through a competition they were never going to win despite being the great all-rounders the various tasks are designed to find.

It is perhaps too much to expect them at usually quite youthful ages to have watertight business plans.

My format for the show would be to have the candidates whittled down to 5 and then be sent on a business bootcamp to develop their ideas into investable propositions. Instead of the interviews, they each give presentations at the end of the week with two selected to create the marketing videos etc

Essentially they are competing through the tasks to have the opportunity of big business brains coaching with the winner obviously having the added bonus of winning the £250k investment

It makes me wonder if the time spend over the weeks on silly (but entertaining) tasks would be better spent on what would be important in setting up a real business. For example the weeks could be devoted to the candidates developing real business plans. Not on selling perfumed soaps or Kosher chickens, but developing the actual products that the candidates would be selling in the real world.

But obviously that would be a completely different format and might be very difficult to make into an entertaining light entertainment game show.

Because the show is very deceptive. It presents the idea that the candidates can conceive a product out of nothing, develop it, do the market research, manufacture it and take it to market in a day or two.
If they can do that for a task you could be forgiven for being mistaken thinking that the candidates could quite easily set up any business they want to just like that.

Agree with your last paragraph. The show "lays on" (hate the way he uses that phrase!) good graphic designers, manufacturers, sources for focus groups, etc, when the reality is they'd have to find these themselves if they were starting a business. And those suppliers could screw it all up. Supply chain management is a key business challenge for any entrepreneur that the show doesn't test AT ALL. Get procurement wrong and it won't matter how much you sell. You'll lose money hand over fist or risk other liabilities. Instead we get Sugar right at the end of a seemingly exhaustive selection process questioning whether Bianca could handle manufacturers.

And there's no easy fix for this in the process tbh. Cos no business in its right mind would risk being trialled as a supplier on tv, especially not when the candidate could make them look worse than they are.

I don't agree about Katie. I said from the start that I thought she was limited: great at following orders with tenacity (e.g. the margin task), and a scrappy plucky little grafter who had some direct sales ability. But big business brain or entrepreneur? No. And I think her plan and the relevant skills WERE tested (albeit roughly) by the food challenge. I strongly disagree with those who said that not having a good taste palette or eye on ingredient prices DIDN'T make her a high risk when her plan involved food. So while she was very competent in some areas, and I'd hire her if I wanted someone reliable and organised, I think her actual plan relied on skills that she didn't demonstrate to a great enough degree. A fitness idea selling her existing skills would have been way more viable.

I also felt a plan to start a restaurant catering to middle class mores in Sunderland was a non-starter and was most certainly never going to upscale nationally without someone gifted in the restaurant business behind it (and even then, many have tried and failed).

If the format starts with 16 viable business plans, they can tailor the tasks a bit more so that each candidate gets a chance to PM the task that most closely relates to their idea. The food task was a great one for testing Katie and Roisin. More like that I say.

Regardless of performance throughout the tasks, Susan and Tom were Sugar's winners because they had what he wanted; an in to the beauty business. The other finalists may well have had crap BPs but who knows what the other candidates BPs were about? Sugar did. He had/has the opportunity to manipulate the whole thing. Helen and others can be oustanding and brilliant in the tasks but if Sugar doesn't like their BP there's little point in them participating. The concept of the prog is flawed.

Can't be done. The problem isn't viable business plans. Its having ones that can produce large returns safely on just 250k.

if you exclude all the people interested in small businesses earning normal profits, and those with big ideas neeeding more money and risk you will have toi try and fill the show with people like the last 4 winners. It will be inventors with patents, people in overpaid service jobs wanting to expand doing what they are doing, and people with specific qualifications wanting to do something lucrative.

The show will then lose its character - there will be a much narrower range of people, even if no one north of Watford works out they have no chance of winning on the last 4 years of history. Anyone who looks like a young Sugar will vanish, as will the small shop owners , and service providers.

Worse , the people who Lord Sugar likes, and his winners, will often be terrible at the tasks. You will have gameplayers, nerds, salesmen, wideboys and a few competent professionals , but a lot fewer of the very capable corporate types, or canny small business people ,with raw entrepreneurial and business talent. Even if you can find 16 Toms and Marks, the show will be chaos without the Roisins, and Katie's ,and duller without the other character extremes too.

The problem is in the showconcept - it can only work with the range of a traditional early series cast, but only a few people can qualify to win the new prize.

The business plans are what it comes down to, but task performance always counts. A strong task performer will not win if their business plan isn't good, but the same can be said the other way around - if someone's task performance was awful, they won't win even if their business plan is great, because the whole point of the tasks is to show that you are capable of running it. Just ask Francesca, whose business plan was actually quite good but never really had a shining moment on a task.

Well it would, be far better than someone just turning up at the last minute and claiming something was unviable, or them being judged on irrelevant things in tasks, or their ability to do what they would hire some specialist to do. .

The "unviable" charge is clearly tosh in some cases . Even this series Bianca and Roisin have found backers.He, himself, backed susan after doing the necessary research on her plan. And there's nothing to think that Katie couldn't run a restaurant , or Jemma another swimming club, or Pamela (?) something for dyslexics., or that Felipe can't do what he offers.The tasks showed nothing significantly negative about whether they could do what was needed. And, in Katie's case, she displayed more innate business sense than almost anyone else. If they presented their concepts in more depth, and refined them, or there were more appropriate tests, and consistent marking of them , we would have a better idea of who could do what.

It wouldn't solve the problem, though. The problem is that Roisin's plan offers him little interest, and requires too much money, risk, time, and specialist knowledge. Bianca needs more money, time and risk tolerance. Katie's restaurant may offer him £4 a meal , wheras Marks workers on £10 an hour can each bring in £800 a day. And Leah's botox patients will be perpetually coming back at even higher rates per hour. Mark needs no food , or cooks or waiters to provide his service, and can operate out of even smaller premises. There's basically no way the Katie's, Roisins, Bianca's, Francescas or Jemmas, can compete by offering him what he wants as a return - let alone the people wanting to start up services for the sick, or old, or shops.

There's also no history, so far, of anyone winning doing anything other than their last day job, or anyone based outside the M25 getting the 250k. You could produce the best supported proposal for any shop restaurant or club in Sunderland, Glasgow or Liverpool , and still would stand no chance.

I'd just like to point out that it was actually Lindsay, and not Jemma, who wanted to set up the swimming club. And she was clearly out of her depth in the process, and was probably going to quit if he hadn't fired her.

I don't think someone outside the M25 would have 'no chance'. He may persuade them to change the location of their business, but I think he'd still talk to them about it, if it was something he was really interested in.

Was just going to post almost the same thing.

I'd be interested to see what the real deal is with the way the programme is put together.

Let's face it, if they went with a group of hopefuls who really were the most credible candidates, the show would be deadly-dull.
Conversely, if they went with those who were the best "characters", based on their interviews, Sugar would probably have long-since refused to offer any financial support (unless, of course, he's somehow earning enough from the show to offset any costs).

The reality is probably that every year there's a negotiation which leads to Sugar having a certain amount of input to ensure some of the candidates are a viable proposition while the rest are picked simply for entertainment value and then become cannon fodder throughout the series.

As for the tasks, themselves, they serve two purposes:-
1) They provide the entertainment which we all enjoy.
2) They give Sugar a chance to see how the "real" candidates operate and give him an opportunity to look for any catastrophic weaknesses in a person who might otherwise seem like a good prospect.