I watched Dragon’s Den the other day.
If you don’t know the format, it is like Pop Idol for inventors/wannabe entrepreneurs etc. In between the moments when I have to leave the room out of sheer embarrassment for the ‘pitchers’, I quite like all the crazy and brilliant ideas and the different approaches people have.
Anyway.
True to form a chap steps out and pitches his idea for a safety gadget for seatbelts. Its aim, to stop children putting their arms out of the belt, which is apparently very bad as it increases their chances of being badly hurt in an accident.
All the Dragons loved the idea.
For some reason, known only to them, they proceeded to tear strips off him for not knowing the size of his market, how to get a distributor and whatever else it was they seemed to think a train engineer should know about bringing a new product to market.
Ahem…May I suggest that had he known the answers to those questions he may not have been on Dragon’s Den? I appreciate that even to some of us who aren’t successful business people he seemed to have some basic gaps in his thinking but, he did manage to invent a gadget to save children’s lives so, in the grand scheme of things I think we can forgive him.
Of course I was shouting at the telly.
What’s my point?
1) People aren’t all the same.
2) We should be respectful of people who are not the same as us, have different skills to us, etc.
3) Manners are never surplus to requirement.
I’ll try to keep away from the telly.
