As much as I like Andy on the Apprentice, last night he really had to go.

Anyone who could design such a hideous product suggests a serious problem.

But everyone makes mistakes, has bad days, falls flat from time to time. The fact that he could look at the two side by side--one sleek, simple, elegant, and highly creative, beside the other drab, ordinary, discolored, abomination, that required a small series of logical connections just to get to the idea of "best of both worlds," perhaps the most overused cliche in all of diet marketing--pretty much a straight rehash of Miller Lite's "less filling/taste great" campaign which became ubiquitous a few decades back--and STILL not get it . . .

Either he's incredibly dense or equally close-minded.

That bottle failed on every level. And the other went so far beyond the call. The most impressive feat of any Apprentice team ever, by far, to my memory.

The truth is, most creative attempts at radical innovation end up falling pretty flat. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we could assume the design would be highly derivative or completely awful. (E.g., both new toys developed earlier in the season were sad. Nothing much new about them at all.)

The Apex bottle was actually really cool. And most importantly, it didn't attempt to build together a series of mental steps toward some idea--how many ideas did the Andy team really think a consumer is going to process when looking at a freaking bottle?

The Apex bottle just looked edgy. They took the central theme and made it come alive aethetically.

I won't fault the Andy team for failing to pull that off, because that's a really hard thing to pull off. The problem is, they didn't try. They didn't even get that that's what they needed to do. Worse, they still didn't grasp it when they saw the other bottle.

And then we have his inexperience again. Embarassing proportions this week.

Carolyn handled that masterfully in the boardroom. Didn't trash him for it, just spooled out enough rope for him to do the hanging himself.

And how did you motivate them? she asked casually.

He went straight to the more emphemeral factors and she just asked, how else?

And then he said cash, and she just repeated simply, "Cash." In the most dissmissive and quietly disgusted manner imaginable. Only the one word parted her lips, but it came through clearly as, "Seriously? You handed them cash?"

He repeated the words, and suddenly couldn't face the panel. First time I ever saw his eyes hit the table, embarassed to look anyone in the eye.

Man, she's good.

Nearly as bad as the cash, though, was the failure to feed.

That is just about the very first thing that every first-line superviser learns, much less a manager or executive: Make sure the team's basic bodily needs are met. If they're cold, wet, tired or hungry, they're not going to perform. Sometimes you have to press through those, but if there's any way to avoid them, for God's sake do it.

Sleep can be the trickiest, because it takes so much time. You sometimes have to run your team down for a week or a month on a deathmarch, because there's just no time for 8 hours a night. But food? You can wolf down enough to keep you going in ten minutes. Five, if necessary. And when the work is largely discussion, you can do them at the same time.

Sure, it's tempting to think you can just push people past it, like you're "wasting" the ten minutes. But you only have to try it both ways once to learn that you can "waste" the ten or waste two hours with listless people on your hands performing poorly.

The fact that he doesn't know something that basic yet . . .

He's not even close to being ready to lead a company. He's not ready to lead a small team. He needs to be on a team first.

Of course they knew this when they cast him. Mildly cruel of them to throw him in way over his head so we could see just how pathetically ill-prepared he was.

He made the bargain, though. And in spite of all that, I think he redeemed himself quite well as being a highly talented guy. (Aside from last night's creation. And the fact that he still thought it was beautiful weeks later on the Today Show this morning is a little more damning.)

He'll do really well in business. He's just got a shitload of learning ahead of him.