Henry Nasella, former chairman and CEO of Staples, Inc. and Star Markets, stressed the importance of calculated risk-taking and innovation in successful entrepreneurship Wednesday night in Cabot.
The lecture, entitled "Beyond the Boundaries: Creating High Performance Companies," focused on transforming a small private company into a multi-billion dollar public corporation.
Nasella's talk was the closing event of the first annual Tufts Entrepreneurship Conference.
To achieve success at the level of Staples or Star Markets, "you must change in some fundamental way the rules of an industry," said Nasella, who is currently a venture partner with Apax Partners.
Nasella recommended that students interested in this kind of innovation "spend time in businesses that are the current paradigm for what you want to reinvent."
"Good entrepreneurs know their strengths and weaknesses, and are willing to let maturation and fertilization happen," Nasella said. "I was successful because I was prepared to work harder, to take whatever risks were necessary at the time."
But when it comes to good leadership, "management is really the most important," Nasella said. "How do you get everyone involved? You must fundamentally treat everyone with respect and dignity. Ownership is not just about a piece of paper."
Nasella used Apple as an example of a company who "really figured it out."
"The question is, I can build it, I can sell it, but will they come? Apple has figured out how to deliver to the marketplace what [consumers] really want," he said.
Nasella said he felt that less than five percent of starting companies were "fanatical about customer research. It's very critical, and it takes money and time. This isn't the sexy part, it's the hard part," he said.
Finding out who makes up a company's customer base is crucial to its continued success, Nasella said. At Staples, this base was made up of what he labeled "hybrid marketing," as its customers are mainly not retail consumers but business-to-business consumers.
"[With the Internet,] you have the ability to talk constantly to your customers, it's a huge advantage," Nasella said. "You have to test yourself, ask do I have it right?"
He said "being first is more important than being the best sometimes," and discussed Microsoft's employment of this strategy. He said that while Microsoft took time figuring out which products were best, they did so without disappearing from the market.
Nasella told students they were lucky to be living in Boston because opportunities were available to them to find and pursue, "not just for now but for your whole life," he said.
"Learning is life-long. I'm 57, and I constantly read everything I can - books, periodicals - and go to seminars," he said.
Nasella's address ended a day of panels and workshops sponsored by the Young Entrepreneurs at Tufts (YET), which has sought to build business relationships between the Tufts community and the greater Boston area since its inception in 2000.
Senior and YET Chairman Jason Friedman said the conference was intended to "promote knowledge of entrepreneurship on campus, [and] get people more involved in the idea of starting something on their own rather than taking one set task."
"The conference exceeded my expectations," Friedman said.
About 50 students and earlier panelists attended Nasella's speech, a number Friedman hopes to increase at future conferences.
Entrepreneurship will be the topic of another lecture next Tuesday when Jonathan Tisch, CEO of Loews Hotels, will speak in the Tisch Library at a lecture sponsored by the Lyon and Bendheim Alumni Lecture series.
