Of course, some successful businesses don’t even produce business plans. In these business plans, some don’t even describe a business strategy, although many do using the standard techniques such as SWOT or PESTEL.
Last night’s final of the #BBCApprentice involved senior business professionals interviewing the finalists on the basis of their business plans. Recruitment manager Ricky Martin came out the eventual winner, with Tom Gearing’s plan for a fine wine hedge fund coming a close second.
Lord Sugar was correct to query the viability of the business model of the one-click ingredients-buying business mechanism proposed by Nick Holzherr. It is very difficult in business to monetise successfully, in other words make profitable, one-click business models. In fact, much of the capital in that intangible asset probably lies in the intellectual property of the implementation of this idea legally through a patent, so I would advise Nick to think about patent protection for this straight away. 1-click models can be the subject of complicated legal challenges, as Amazon will testify.
Tom Gearing’s hedge fund for fine wines seems like a way for Lord Sugar to make a ‘fast buck’, but this might have incurred a wrath of Ed Miliband (particularly as Lord Sugar is a Labour peer.) Indeed, the return on this risk might have been enormous, by virtue of this being a very high risk transaction with a high beta index. Lord Sugar put this simply as him not wishing to gamble with other people’s money, and indeed in Lord Sugar’s conscience it might have been difficult for Lord Sugar to make the winner of the BBC Apprentice 2012 a ‘fast buck’ business idea, interesting though it is. Of course, it is not a bad idea, for example Daniel Capocci in Journal of Management Science has provided that sustainable hedge fund models can outperform equity and debt finance, but concerns about the sustainability of hedge funding exist in the corporate world.
In contrast, Ricky Martin’s idea does have legs. I would indeed go as far as to agree with Claude, and to say it is a very clever idea. The technology and pharmacological industries continue to produce growth, in Scandinavia and the USA particularly. Personally, I wouldn’t inject too much of a ‘greenwash’ element into it, unless the green credentials are genuine and not simply a marketing fad. However, I do like very much the idea of enmeshing sustainability in it. Ricky Martin was cut short very quickly at the beginning of the episode when he referred to it, but I feel that the business literature is now picking up on the idea of sustainability in business recruitment, an idea which, in fact, the legal profession could do with listening to.
And yes – this may not have been Lord Sugar’s intention, but I loved the final episode of the series firstly as a Leftie and as a MBA graduate. I think I know Lord Sugar’s opinions of both categories of people!
