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Research and development is integral to the success of Vision 20/20, and our innovation strategy is led by the Davey Institute.
e general manager of the Davey Institute is responsible for our innovation strategy and reports through the vice president and
general manager of research, recruiting and human resource development, who in turn reports to the chief operating officer.
e COO provides quarterly updates to the board. Because innovation is one of Davey's top tier material topics, we are further
integrating the management of sustainability with the management of innovation, and plan to create innovation goals in 2017.
In 2016, Davey continued innovating services to combat pollinator loss. is year, we piloted our innovative, patent-pending
approach to coordinate plant blooms with pollinator need, and planted several acres of pollinator habitats. Davey also formed
a partnership with researchers at e Ohio State University to investigate how climate change will affect our clients' landscapes.
Anticipating changes to growing seasons, tree species distribution, pests, pollinators and weather patterns, our arborists are
already modifying service recommendations to bring to our clients the latest science of the day. As the industry leader, it is
critical we have the most up-to-date and market-ready information to both innovate and better educate our customers.
INDICATOR
Innovation has only recently been identified, through our materiality assessment, as a top area of interest to our
stakeholders. Davey is developing an appropriate and meaningful metric, tied to strategic direction and goals, that
we can track and use to report progress annually. We do not have such a metric available at this time. We intend
to include our new metric in next year's Corporate Responsibility report.
