Successful CEO who implemented technology over decades shares experiences with LSUS students

Successful CEO who implemented technology over decades shares experiences with LSUS students

SHREVEPORT - When Scotte Hudsmith attended LSU Shreveport as a student in the early 1980s, he said there were only three buildings on campus.

Not unlike his start in the business world, which was a position entering customer orders on the new green screen terminals for the Sears Catalog.

Now Hudsmith has started eight different businesses that he said generated billions of dollars of enterprise value, the latest ones excelling at the intersection of healthcare and technology, specifically artificial intelligence.

As chairman and CEO of Specialized Dental Partners, one of the nation's most advanced specialty dental platforms focused on delivering integrated care, Hudsmith said artificial intelligence is just another tool that businesses of all kinds can use to deliver positive results for patients or clients.

"At the time that computers started taking off, people thought that computers were evil and that nobody could use them," Hudsmith said, speaking to a group of LSUS students and faculty Friday at Davis Family Business Engagement Center in an event organized by the College of Business. "People that recorded memos in typing pools and distributed throughout the office - jobs like that were the ones thought to be eliminated by computers.

"The same goes for the internet and the cell phone. But what happened in every one of those phases is that jobs weren't lost, they just changed."

Hudsmith addressed students, some of which are on the verge of graduation and wondering how AI will affect potential jobs they might seek.

"I understand why today's headlines make you nervous, especially when companies are coming out and saying how it's their goal not to hire any new employees in next year's budgets," Hudsmith said. "But having the ability to learn different skillsets provides opportunities to grow and have different experiences.

"AI isn't eliminating jobs, it's just changing the way people work. It's an opportunity to take routine and mundane tasks and have those done through automation. There still has to be a person to tell AI what that task is and somebody to verify that AI got it right."

Hudsmith used the example of reading dental scans and other images - which exists not just in dentistry but in healthcare in general.

"For a doctor to read a typical scan, it takes about 10 minutes … and sometimes patients go out and seek second opinions," Hudsmith said. "What AI can do right now is to be the first set of eyes on a scan or image, and it takes doctors 30-45 seconds to verify the conclusion AI came to. Doctors can be that second opinion.

"So go out and play with this technology and realize that it can be a partner. I wish I was younger and not at the tail end of my career so I could use AI to make a bigger difference in the world."

Hudsmith admitted that he "wasn't a very good student" in his time at LSUS, eventually graduating from the University of Memphis before pursuing executive training at Harvard Business School.

But one key tactic which he did successfully adopt is to embrace change and build teams that can do so as well - all with the end goal of making people's lives better.

"If you would have known me when I was here, there's no way you'd think I would have done what I've done," joked Hudsmith, who guided orthodontic platform Smile Doctors from two locations to more than 650 nationwide in 11 years. "But I found some really smart people and really good people to come together as a team, people that can go out and make a difference.

"I leveraged debt and technology to make changes in an industry that you'd never think would have this kind of change. Who would have thought innovation could be so prevalent in dentistry?"