Members of the public pitch their business ideas to five multi-millionaires in an attempt to get investment capital for their fledgling companies

BBC Economics editor Evan Davis presents Dragon's Den. The five "dragons" in the programme are: Peter Jones, Duncan Bannatyne, Rachel Elnaugh, Simon Woodroffe and Doug Richards. The dragons are collectively worth about half a billion pounds.

The programme is not quite a game show because the dragons are offerring their own real money, and any deals made are real deals. The only artificial elements are the rules imposed by the programme. These state that the person asking for investment cannot accept less money than what they first asked for. So, if they asked for £50,000, and one dragon offers them £25,000, they must secure another £25,000 from another dragon or they will leave with nothing.

The ideas pitched in Dragon's Den range from sensible and potentially lucrative ideas (like a vending machine for cheap umbrellas), to ideas that are somewhat risky at best, such as flying personal transport vehicles.

Since the dragons are offering their own money, they are not afraid to let people know what they really think about their ideas, and many of the people offering bad ideas are told in no uncertain terms the reasons why their ideas are so bad. However, the people with genuinely good ideas and good business sense can turn the debate to their advantage.

For example, in one case, two brothers came in with a machine for measuring all the walls in a room in one go using a system of lasers, a digital camera and a laptop computer. Three of the dragons decided that the item was too technical for them to make an informed decision. The remaining two were very interested, but tried to show a merely casual interest. The brothers said that they did not know much about business and would also like help from the dragons as well as money. Soon the two dragons were pitching their own strengths to the men, instead of the other way around.

Your Idea Can Make You Rich (Book)