{"id":177,"date":"2016-09-26T21:37:40","date_gmt":"2016-09-27T01:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mcnaircenter.org\/blog\/?p=177"},"modified":"2020-10-15T12:37:29","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T16:37:29","slug":"conversation-with-bob-mcnair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/conversation-with-bob-mcnair\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with Bob McNair"},"content":{"rendered":"

On August 29, 2016, the McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation hosted an evening with Bob McNair. \u00a0As the founder of Cogen Technologies and the founder, chairman, and CEO of the Houston Texans, McNair\u00a0drew on his vast experience in business and philanthropy\u00a0to\u00a0offer advice to Rice University students and young professionals.<\/p>\n

In 1960, McNair arrived in Houston with $700 and a goal to break into the trucking industry. However, after he established his trucking company, the industry became deregulated,\u00a0forcing him into millions of dollars of debt. Despite\u00a0this failure, McNair\u00a0used his new knowledge of deregulation to find\u00a0opportunity in three industries: intermodal transport, telecommunications, and cogeneration. Cogeneration, or the concurrent production of electricity and heat, became\u00a0McNair’s most successful\u00a0investment, and in 1999, he sold his company Cogen Technologies for $1.5 billion.<\/p>\n

When asked for career advice, McNair emphasized to students and young professionals the importance of adding value to their environments. “The most important thing is putting yourself in a position where you can add the most value, and when you add the most value, the compensation will come to you,” he stated.<\/p>\n

This idea of adding value was behind the $8 million endowment from the Robert and Janice McNair Foundation that\u00a0launched the McNair Center for\u00a0Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Rice University, one of six across the country. McNair said, “this is an opportunity for us to make a real contribution to society and to help create an environment that empowers ingenuity and creativity, unleashes the productivity of private enterprise and builds sustainable economic growth.”<\/p>\n

Read more in\u00a0the Baker Institute’s newsletter<\/a> and the Rice Thresher’s article<\/a> on the event.<\/p>\n