The Apprentice vs Dragon's Den: Which Show offers more Business Lessons?

The Apprentice is an entertaining, adrenaline fuelled fight to find a business partner for Lord Sugar. Dragons' Den is effectively a pitching contest where budding entrepreneurs try to entice successful investors into funding and supporting their business endeavours. Both are ratings winners, both are entertaining but which one enriches viewers with the most Business knowledge?

For me Dragons' Den wins this one. The five Dragons dish out plenty of advice as they dissect, interrogate and mercilessly grill potential business partners with rigorous analysis and precise business acumen. Viewers are treated to a master-class in negotiation where the percentage of equity on offer for a given amount of investment is haggled over,sometimes to the last 1%. After watching a few series you get a feel for what is a good idea and what is a waste of time. The importance of knowing your numbers and being able to quote profit, loss, turnover and margins at will, are championed and promoted as an essential skill by the Dragons. The achievements of Peter Jones, Duncan Bannatyne, Debroah Meaden, Theo Paphitis and James Cann (who is now to be replaced by Hillary Devey) are inspiring and educational to watchers, many of whom have aspired to running their own concerns but have never had decent role models to learn from.



Dragons' Den may win the educational battle but The Apprentice wins the entertainment battle. Followers young and old love to point out the failures of candidates and suggest better ways of doing things while watching the show. The 'You're Fired' moment is as exciting as any cliff hanger from the soap operas of the day and offers a fine conclusion to the day's business lesson. No viewer can say that they have never picked up some business pointers from Lord Sugar, who never misses a chance to emphasise the importance of common sense and lateral thinking in making any business decisions.

Both Shows are great and are playing their part in encouraging entrepreneurs of the past,present and future.

Business Owner or Entrepreneur?

                           



Are you a Business Owner or an Entrepreneur? The word 'Entrepreneur' is thrown around all over the place in the business world today. The word is synonymous with million dollar fortunes, Mercedes Maybachs and  extravagant lifestyles. In an effort to make themselves sound more important, successful and interesting, people often use this term when describing themselves. Lord Sugar has noted this trend and has quite rightly said that the word entrepreneur should only be applied in reference to someone other than yourself in observation of their accomplishments. An entrepreneur is someone who creates innovative products and services that captivate the marketplace.  Sir James Dyson is known for making a fortune by pioneering bagless vacuum cleaning systems which have revolutionized the domestic market. Mark Zuckerberg has changed the way people socialise. Alan Sugar brought affordable PCs to the domestic market for the first time in UK. The three examples mentioned all embody the definition of an entrepreneur. All three have thought, 'outside the box' and brought and sold original ideas to consumers. The two key properties of an entrepreneur are firstly their ability to create groundbreaking products or services and secondly that they have made large sums of money and have turned their ideas into profits. A lot of people that have average ideas or run mundane ubiquitous businesses are 'Business Owners' not entrepreneurs as many of them erroneously label themselves. Self- employed people that run laundrettes, cafes, florists, hairdressers, bookmakers, etc are not innovators and are engaging in widely available business models that have been around for years and years. Having said that I am a big fan of Business Owners as they form the basis of economies and present self-employed opportunities to all people from any backgrounds. Many people make big money in conventional, tried and tested industries and full credit to them.