Over Bite Keith Beaty's company nips the international dental-implants market By Russ Moore ost successful entrepreneurs can point to a moment of I truth, a turning point, a "wake-up call." For Keith Beaty, it came nearly 30 years ago when the Georgia Tech sophomore was called down by the assistant dean of engineering. "He said, 'Son, your GPA's not looking too good. You need to leave and decide if you want to be a student here or not/" recalls Beaty, now chief executive officer of 3i in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the world's largest privately held manufacturer and marketer of dental-implant components. "So I went to Southern Tech one quarter and made all A's. It taught me the level of competence at Tech, of both the students and the faculty. 1 was from Moultrie, a small town in south Georgia, and wasn't academically prepared when I got to Tech. That talk with the dean and the quarter at Southern were real wake-up calls." Beaty returned to Tech and earned his civil engineering degree in 1972, then he and his wife moved to Tallahassee, where he was an engineer with the Florida Department of Transportation. During the Arab oil embargo, an enterprising Beaty was tapped as a liaison on energy issues for the
governor's office. Soon he was working with a legislative study commission. "I was writing legislation and consulting on engineering and policy matters with some of the most prominent people in the state." He was 23. After a brief stint with the Florida Solar Energy Commission at Cape Canaveral, Beaty and his wife moved to her hometown of West Palm Beach. "I went there without a plan," he says. His father-in-law owned Latham Manufacturing, which made a high
performance, axial-flow supercharger, a precision racing part which made the cover of Motor Trend. Beaty joined the firm and began a new career in manufacturing and design. "It's not something civil engineers typically do," he admits. Like many of his fellow alumni, though, his Tech experience gave him the drive to learn and excel at a new discipline in a short time. In 1986, Beaty met his current business partner while they were both waiting for their daughters to compete in a swim meet. Richard Lazzara, a dentist, had an idea for a dental prosthetic that would be a great improvement over the Swedish-made market leader. Beaty brought design and manufacturing know-how to the equation, and soon the two were in business. They named their new company 3i for Innovative Implants Inc. "From the very start, making quality products was a priority," Beaty says. Listening to his customers was important, too, and with suggestions from dentists and dental clinicians, 3i was soon turning out several products. "I'd do the designs,
Keith Beaty cooked up a winner designing innovative dental implants. It is now one of the fastest growing technology companies in Florida.
Fall 1999 . GEORGIA TECH
71