Lessons From the Apprentice – Design a New Gadget

This weeks task on the Apprentice was to design and pitch a new household gadget.  Lord Sugar said that the success of the task would be very much down to the concept as the team who secured the most orders from two major retailers would win. The boys led by Azhar decided to focus on…

Lessons From the Apprentice – Print It and Sell It

So on the day the latest budget was announced, the new series of the BBC’s Apprentice starts.  Lord Alan Sugar has 12 new contestants competing for an investment in starting a new business, having him as a business partner. I can’t help but think – New Series, Same Lessons? Have these people not seen the…

Lessons from the Apprentice Returns This Evening

It’s back, the new series of the Apprentice starts this evening, and as we did in the last series we will be reviewing the lessons that we can learn the approaches that the contestants take during their tasks. Look out for our weekly posts by our Managing Director David Lumley as he gives his take…

Business and Leadership Lessons From the Apprentice – The Interviews

So this years series of the Apprentice is now over and the winner announced, and in order to get to the point we are now the candidates have been through the interview stage. In this stage the candidates are grilled by 4 business professionals who will scrutinise their CV’s and business plans, and in most…

Business and Leadership Lessons From the Apprentice – Fast Food

A short update this week on Business and Leadership Lessons From the Apprentice, simply because many of the mistakes and lessons are the same as previous episodes; however, there are some key lessons to draw from this weeks episode. This week the teams were tasked with putting together a fast food restaurant. They would be…

Business and Leadership Lessons From The Apprentice – Smell What Sells

This weeks task was simple – take a set of products, try and sell them, find out what’s selling, re-invest your money in the moving products and sell them and so on. But it seemed that both of this week’s teams didn’t quite grasp this. For this week the teams were yet again mixed and…

Business and Leadership Lessons From the Apprentice – Biscuits

This week the teams were tasked with bringing another new product to market, this time biscuits, and it was clear that lessons from previous tasks had still not been learnt. The teams were mixed again this week with Zoe taking charge of Venture and Helen Logic. Half of the teams were sent to a development…

Business and Leadership Lessons from the Apprentice – Selling in France

This weeks task saw the team picking British products and selling them to French retailers. After a re-jig of the teams, Lord Sugar placed Tom in charge of Logic and Susan put herself forward to be in charge of Venture. The first job of the day was to split the teams and send one half…

Business and Leadership Lessons From the Apprentice – Freemiums

In this weeks task, the teams were asked to produce a free premium magazine and sell advertising space in them. These free magazines that have come to be known as Freemiums are a massive business due to the volume that is given away and makes money from the advertising space that is available. It was…

Leadership and Business Lessons From the Apprentice – Rubbish

This weeks task was all about rubbish! More specifically it was about Logistics, Planning and knowing the value of time and product. The task was to collect rubbish and make a profit from it. Trying to charge more collection than it would to dump as well as looking out for a valuable product that could…