I disagree. You can't have it both ways. As a team, you have to be objective. All the crying and cumbaya feelings is irrelevant. The real world in business knows when to cut a team member. It happens all the time.
In the case where the team actually fails, or if there's discordance within the team, the question is totally valid.
However, in this case, "failure" is an extremely subjective term in that: the collection was cohesive, and for the most part, well constructed (there were construction issued on the other team as well); and the judges even said that, given the financial constraints, Team Unity had done extremely well. The failure was in the misconstruing of the vision, based mainly on anxiety from the pitch.
There was also no discordance within either team: both worked very well together, communicated, and executed well under the extreme time constraint.
In such a situation, in the real world, there would be actual discussion between the investors and the team (and there would have been at least one conference between investors/team before the final presentation as well). In the real world, with a well-integrated team like both Button and Unity, there would less discussion about taking someone out and more along the lines of adjusting expectations and results from both investor and team.
Now. To me, during the pitch, the judges were responding to energy level more than anything else: Button was disorganized and enthusiastic, with bubbling energy from Dexter and the team. Unity was more low-key, very on-point, led by the quiet, confident articulation of Alex. The judges responded better to the high energy of Button, and even though I felt the description of their vision wasn't as clear as Unity's, I could understand how that could be. The clear preference ate at Unity's confidence in their vision, but I still don't feel, based on their product, that they failed - I wouldn't wear *any* of the teams' designs to my conservative office, so on that score, to me, both teams "failed". So I viewed them simply as attractive pieces of clothing. Based on that criterion, neither team "failed". The judges responded to Button better than to Unity, but to me, it was more subjective than otherwise.
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cacceb83
8 years ago
Couldn't have said it better myself. I agree.
This was the only time I've ever seen the question completely unnecessary because everyone worked well together. I just think if Heidi asks the question "who should go home?" And nobody wants to give an answer that should be good enough. Have the designers tell you who was responsible for what and eliminate per that knowledge.
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