Sugar's Juniors

It’s that time of year again for the Lord himself to find his teenager apprentice. The series begins tonight on BBC1 at 9pm. Don’t worry if you miss it, there’s always BBC iPlayer – one of BBC’s extremely useful innovations! 

The Apprentice is designed to test individuals' business skills, ideas, knowledge and their innovative capabilities in a number of tasks that vary each week. The candidates are split into two teams, each with their own mentor; either Karren or Nick. Every week, their performance in tasks is monitored by their mentor and receive feedback in the dreaded boardroom where all is revealed. The winning team receive a treat of Sugar's choice whilst the losing team sit in a café with their hot drinks discussing where it all went wrong; continuously shifting the blame on each other before facing the boardroom yet again. Each week one candidate "Get's fired" until the final where Sugar is left to pick his young apprentice from the two remaining.

Last year’s winner, Arjun Rajyagor, was described as the ‘maths wiz kid’. He won £25,000 to launch a business career of his choice, with support and control from Lord Sugar. According to Sugar he had “that natural business flair combined with intelligence” that “you can’t learn”. Arjun runs a computer repair business from home and is currently at college studying A Levels. He has been offered a place at Oxford University to study engineering science. He will receive his prize when he wishes to undertake his business venture - once approved by the Lord! (BBC News, Accessed 24/10/11).

This year’s candidates: Harry Hitchens, Karren Brady, Lord Sugar, Nick Hewer, Lewis Roman, Lizzie Magee, James McCullagh, Harry Maxwell, Zara Brownless, Mahamed Awale, Hannah Richards, Hayley Forrester, Ben Fowler, Haya Al Dlame and Gbemi Okunola.

I’m lucky enough to know Hayley Forrester so will hopefully be able to interview her at some point during this blog to report on her experiences. It’s all about who you know in the business world; networking is vital.

Towards the end of this completed view, I will compose an overview of the series.

References:

BBC News [online], Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10288220 BBC Junior Apprentice won by Arjun Rajyagor (Accessed: 24th October 2011)

BBC Press Releases [online], Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2011/10_october/18/young_apprentice.shtml Young Apprentice: Introduction (Accessed: 24th October 2011)

Starting at the beginning...

Welcome to my blog. My overall aim is to provide a general overview of innovation and relate this to various industries, companies and TV programmes. Reference is made to University talks from several organisations. IBM and Enterprise-rent-a-car were both talks lead by placement students who explained the company background as well as describing their industrial placements; providing me with useful and relevant information to include in parts of my blog. The Virgin Atlantic event was arranged by the University’s Marketing Advertising and Public Relations Society (MAPR) where the Sales and Marketing Director, Paul Dickinson, gave a very informative and interesting talk giving an outline of Virgin’s history as well as some successful innovations, insights into their marketing campaigns and the everyday running of the company.

Now to introduce the concept of innovation…
Innovation has become an integral part of many, mostly all, businesses as a method of survival in today’s tough economic environmental conditions. Since the global recession began in 2008, businesses have been struggling to survive and have had to devise new strategies as a result to compete and most importantly, survive.

In general, the economy has shifted from one focussed on "material products and transactions" to a "creative economy in which ideas and knowledge are the new capital" (Bilton, C. 2007:24); illustrating the important role of innovation.

In McKeown’s book, “The truth about innovation”, he defines the term as “new stuff that is made useful” (2008:2). However, innovation is regarded as being more complex than this but has been simplified here for ease of understanding. The ‘usefulness’ of the innovative product(s) is determined by the perceptions of the consumer; highlighting the importance of customer-led production in terms of research and development. Although costly in the short term, research can yield significant long term results through the creation of products that the consumers and market are willing to purchase.

Despite being described above as “new stuff”, the term also accommodates for the improvements of old ideas, versions and models. Constantly researching consumer wants, concerns of existing models and proposals for improvement can form the basis of a business’ innovative ideas.

Previously, concepts such as creativity and innovation were the sole responsibility of departments such as Marketing where creative advertising was used. Now, however, creativity and innovation have become significantly important. As a result, it has become a part of every department and involves every employee within an organisation; regardless of size.

The YouTube video below demonstrates the various aspects of innovation and its importance. The views expressed are from people of business backgrounds at the Lisbon Council Innovation Summit in 2010.

References:

Bilton, C. (2007) Management and Creativity; From Creative Industries To Creative Management, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

McKeown, M. (2008) The Truth About Innovation, Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd. 

YouTube [online], Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NK0WR2GtFs

What is Innovation? (Accessed: 23rd October 2011)

(Pictures will be referenced in the Bibliography once the blog is fully completed)