Snatch the gold ring. Credit goes to Randal for saying, "Let's grab the phones." He turned an accident to his team's advantage. If an opportunity like that ever falls in your lap, seize it. When Randal accidentally discovered that Capital Edge had megaphones waiting to be picked up at a Radio Shack store, he and Rebecca raced there and snagged them first. It was a gutsy move that gave Excel a formidable advantage.
 

Fight for what's right. That's what Felisha did last week when she scrapped with studio musicians until they got her team's song right. Felicia realized from the start that horse-drawn carriages would be a useless promotional tool, but she buckled under to team pressure and agreed to rent them anyway. That was the main reason her team lost. What happened to her gumption this week?
 

Turn unexpected assets to your advantage. Rebecca's quick thinking maximized the resources that luck had dealt her team. When Rebecca realized that some of her temps were native Spanish-speakers, she sent them to promote Shania by Stetson in Spanish Harlem.
 

You can't win on potential. When you are playing with the grownups, only results count. When Adam tried to save himself from firing by citing his "sponge-like" ability to learn, he was only calling attention to his lack of real-world experience.
 

Is it ethical? At one point in the competition, Excel called Radio Shack trying to track down amplified bullhorns to use in spreading the word about the new perfume. Randal learned that one Radio Shack location had rounded up all of the bullhorns for sale in Manhattan to sell to one buyer—Capital Edge! Randal and Rebecca performed a bit of corporate sabotage by beating the opposition to the Radio Shack store and buying all the bullhorns. Needless to say, the Capital Edge personnel were livid, but they were out of luck.

The bottom line: Although Excel received praise from Mr. Trump in the boardroom for this maneuver, the question is, should Excel have bought the bullhorns from underneath the noses of the Capital Edge team? Is there an ethical issue here?

Imagine if a military commander received, through sheer luck, the battle plans of its enemy. Would the commander be justified in using the material? Most people would say, "Certainly." In fact, it would be ridiculous to think that a military commander would ignore such an advantage. There may not be any cannon or machine gun fire in The Apprentice, but it's a war. With this in mind, there's no ethical problem here. Randal and Rebecca would have been foolish if they had not acted on the information they received from Radio Shack.
 

Advertising effectiveness is hard to measure: Mr. Trump argued that Capital Edge lost the task because: (a) its effort generated five fewer inquiries than Excel's effort did; and (b) Capital Edge, in his opinion, spent too much money on getting horse-drawn carriages to bear the promotional message instead of face-to-face salespeople. Both conclusions are faulty.

First, commentaries on earlier seasons of the show have pointed out the unrealistic nature of determining "winners" and "losers" in the various tasks. Of course, in the final analysis, this is television, first and foremost. And it is true that in Mr. Trump's world of high-stakes negotiation, the line between winning and losing may be clear cut. But in this case, Excel's margin of five additional inquiries to a toll-free telephone number is just not significant, especially keeping in mind that the callers were not purchasers—they were calling to order a free sample. There was no guarantee of future sales.

Second, the fact that Excel got five more inquiries than Capital Edge does not mean that Capital Edge's horse-drawn carriages didn't work. There was nothing mentioned during the show about tracking the means by which people knew to call the toll-free number. All we know is that five more people called Excel's number than called Capital Edge's number. We don't know how many of Capital Edge's calls were generated by the carriages and how many were driven by the personal selling effort. Indeed, if personal selling had been decidedly more successful than the carriages, why didn't Excel win by a larger margin? After all, Capital Edge had a sales force that was much smaller than the size of Excel's contingent.

The bottom line: Mr. Trump's analysis of the reason for Excel's "victory" was pretty shallow, but in fairness to him, it's difficult to draw a firm link between promotional efforts and market response. It's not as simple as looking at sales, or in this case, the number of inquiries. What's needed is a means of assessing, via an embedded marketing research method, the media that actually drove people to respond.
 

Numbers talk, losers walk. There will be times in your career when you win or lose by a nose. You can cry foul, but nobody will listen. The key is to win. The outcome was a virtual tie-978 to 973. When Capital Edge claimed they lost because Excel hijacked their megaphones, Trump didn't want to hear it, and showed nothing but admiration for Excel's gutsy pilfering.