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Reply With QuoteDid anyone else think that one of the contestants on that introductory shot of them walking across the bridge was just the spit of Paul F???
Competition and Capitalism are all about brutal Darwinian natural selection. It is the addtion of democracy and the rule of law to the mix that makes our system work so well.Originally Posted by DavidJames
The Apprentice is all about how the cooperative model and the competitive model interact, as are many other TV quiz shows. For most of the series the only way to ensure that a competitor will be there the next week is for them to be part of the winning team.It'd be nice to see someone do a TV programme trying to follow that cooperative model rather than be "personality-only" focussed. But I guess that wouldn't be good telly...
There are many "good telly" shows all about cooperation, such as the "our team fix up your house/garden" genre.
IMO The MJ scene would benefit greatly from a more cooperative model.
Did anyone else think that one of the contestants on that introductory shot of them walking across the bridge was just the spit of Paul F???
Nope, I don't believe that's true - without getting all hippy about it, successful capitalism has evolved, especially over the last decade or two, to be more inclusive and more complex than just "greed is good".
Along with freedom of the press, then yes, those are the traditional 4 pillars of a "model" society.
AaaghTrust them to schedule this on one of my ceroc nights
I actually quite like the program. The problem is, that it has to be edited. Therefore, you don't know exactly what went on and i assume that the editing is done in a way to make it more entertaining. I did feel sorry for some of the candidates last time, especially the ones who had to deal with Syed - how did Michelle end up with him???One girl i know said that men who have lots of confidence are really sexy - but someone who has lots of confidence but messes things up and p*sses everyone off?
In reference to the comments above about Alan Sugar's business style, we don't really get to see that much of his style of his business do we? We get to see him being all dramatic, and acting like some sort of hard businessman but then it is an entertainment show. He also has to ask people to be accountable for their mistakes - you dont get a six-figure salary just for smiling nicely (models excluded). The person who won the first one seemed quite ok (although i didnt watch it that much). I was a bit more puzzled about Michelle - she didnt really seem to do much until she gave Alan the sob-story about her upbringing and the events i mentioned above seem suggest she might not be the sharpest tool in the box.
The whole scenario is a bit unrealistic anyway. How many times in business are you going to have to work with your rivals to achieve a goal at the same time as trying to beat them?
Missed this ('cos I was out dancing) but watched some of the past series.
(Unfortunately the banks and mortgage lenders do though!)
Its entertainment first and business second (like all TV shows - SCD is about entertainment and that comes first, not the dancing). If you're not entertained, just don't watch it. :shrug:
Just about all of the time. On the macro level: Chambers of commerce. Small business federations. Trade associations. Employers organisations.
Down at the individual level it is called "office politics".
Yeah, I admit I was thinking that too - doesn't make the programme any better of course.
But the point is, all these associations are long-term affairs, they're not reality TV.
DJ ... I'm surpised at you ... not your best comment. How can you compare a computer business to a retail organisation and say one is better than the other because of its market ethics? Tesco and Walmart are two of the most beligerant, hard-assed companies going yet they make a fortune!
Anyway, one point I did find interesting when scanning the profiles on the website. Where are the contestants with business degress. The only one with an MBA got it from OU, no disgrace but hardly something to compare to a Harvard MBA lets say. In the US a fair few contestants have top class business degress, and it shows. The monkeys last night made so many fundamental mistakes it could serve as a "Where did they go wrong" exercise for GCSE Business Studies. Anyone want to make a few guesses as what they did do wrong?
Nice to see someone reads my posts
Thought after i left the computer that it was a bit of a silly thing to write
Be thankful you didn't have to work with her
Failed miserably????? i think not.......you can question Alan Sugar`s personality all you like however it may be wise to familiarise yourself will some facts before comparing supposed failiures in business to others like Stelios, Stelios has came from an extremely fortunate and wealthy background and his hasn`t exactly made a success from all his ventures thats for sure, Sugar came from nothing and is a true self made millionaire, when Stelios has been as successful for as long as Mr Sugar has then i think you can begin your comparisons.....Personally i like the show and have the utmost respect for Alan Sugar depsite his close links to the 3rd best football club in london........
When AMS came into the computer business Tandy had well established Radio Shack stores in most towns in the UK and sold a Z80 based PC running Microsoft MSDOS which had very good word processors for it. It also had the superb Visicalc spreadsheet and a load of other business software. AMS had the marketing genius to sideline all of the other software available for his CP/M machine and sell it as a word processor and, from nothing in the computer business, grab a massive market share. Other massive corporations like Xerox failed miserably with similar spec CP/M PC's.
Do I have a best comment?
I wasn't... was I?
I was merely pointing out that it's possible to create a successful business without being a fourth-rate Gordon Gekko.
Sorry, I'll just pop down to my local Amstrad store to pick up a PC shall I?
Oh... hold on...
Oh good, thanks.
Stelios, like Branson, is an entrepeneur - sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, but they keep on trying and keep on innovating.
Sugar is a trader - he's said so himself. He goes for the short-term gain, and he lacks vision and innovation. I mean - "Xenon green"? Face cream? We're not talking earth-shattering new concepts here are we?
OK, I'll bite.
Stelios has been operating for about 15 years now, and has a fortune of about £720m, with dozens of companies, and thousands of employees worldwide.
Alan Sugar's been operating for about 40 years (Amstrad was founded in 1968), and has a fortune of about £800m, mainly because he's bought up most of Mayfair. He owns one company, Amstrad, which has - wait for it - 85 employees.
Hmmmm....
You don't always have to have wild innovation to be successful at business. Carphone Warehouse - it's a shop that sells phones and phone contracts - hardly innovation - but Charles Dunlop has a penny or two. Philip Green - takes shops & makes them profitable - how much does he spend on his birthday parties? Theo Paphitis of the Dragons Den is known for turning around companies such as Rymans. It's not sexy, but it is clever....
Stelios, like Branson, is an entrepeneur - sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, but they keep on trying and keep on innovating.
Sugar is a trader - he's said so himself. He goes for the short-term gain, and he lacks vision and innovation. I mean - "Xenon green"? Face cream? We're not talking earth-shattering new concepts here are we?
OK, I'll bite.
Stelios has been operating for about 15 years now, and has a fortune of about £720m, with dozens of companies, and thousands of employees worldwide.
Alan Sugar's been operating for about 40 years (Amstrad was founded in 1968), and has a fortune of about £800m, mainly because he's bought up most of Mayfair. He owns one company, Amstrad, which has - wait for it - 85 employees.
Hmmmm....
The other thing is that you don't have to have thousands of employees to 'be successful' either. When I worked for an American investment bank, someone in our department thought that the communication system that linked travel agents could be used for other things - and set up a company to manage that. At the time, it had probably fewer than 100 employees but made several billion dollars inside a few years - and the chances are that you've never heard of Equant (it's head never had a press conference wearing bright orange or woolly jumpers, so perhaps that's why).
I also don't see why owning half of Mayfair is a bad business proposition. Perhaps you could elaborate? Is it the Duke of Westminster who owns most of Chelsea ... and is the richest man in Britain (possibly with a little family money?)
Life is too short to list all of the companies that have been buried in the PC business, or even those that got out in time.
e.g. I remember when there used to be an IBM PC.
Just enough innovation to be successful, and mostly innovative in marketing....Sugar is a trader - he's said so himself. He goes for the short-term gain, and he lacks vision and innovation...
... and that would make the revenue and profit generated per employee ... ?OK, I'll bite.
Stelios has been operating for about 15 years now, and has a fortune of about £720m, with dozens of companies, and thousands of employees worldwide.
Alan Sugar's been operating for about 40 years (Amstrad was founded in 1968), and has a fortune of about £800m, mainly because he's bought up most of Mayfair. He owns one company, Amstrad, which has - wait for it - 85 employees.
Hmmmm....
Why the Hmmm?
I do not like what I see of Mr (Sir, sorry) Sugar. I do not like what I see of his ethics. I do not like the products of his I've seen (Amstrad hifi products, for example, gave new scope to the word 'shoddy')
I'm just a little unclear on how one can describe him as being anything other than spectacularly successful as a businessman. You don't build up from nothing to £800m purely on luck.
Now they tell me ...
I met businessmen that preferred an crooked dime to an honest dollar, and I learned the truth within an old fable.
A scorpion asked a turtle to carry him on his back across a river. "Are you mad?" exclaimed the turtle. "You'll sting me and I'll drown."
"My dear turtle," said the scorpion, "if you were to to drown I would drown with you, why should I do that?"
"You're right!" cried the turtle. "Hop on!" The scorpion climbed aboard and halfway across the river gave the turtle a mighty sting. As they both sank to the bottom, the bewildered turtle asked "Why did you do it, you are going to drown too?"
The scorpion sadly replied. "I can't help it, its my nature."
Absolutely - and then he threw it all away.
Amstrad was worth £1.25 billion pounds, twenty years ago - imagine what it could have been now.
I guess it's just the hugeness of the wasted opportunity that gets me most - it's like IBM deciding that no-one would ever use PCs, like Apple not allowing clone machines, that sort of thing - you just imagine "what if"...
By that measure, presumably we should also respect Mohammed Al Fayed - and for that matter, all the 50+ Russian billionaire oligarchs?
The point is, I don't see him as a good role model to front such a heavily-promoted primetime series.
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