About the Innovation Coalition

The Technology Alliance works with the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association and Washington Technology Industry Association to advocate for a common set of policy priorities essential to growing and sustaining a vibrant innovation-based economy.

We are Washington's innovation community: creating economic opportunity and enhancing quality of life for citizens across our state.

We are job creators:

Innovation industries directly employ more than 381,000 people.
Major industries include software and computer services (92,000 jobs); aerospace (83,000 jobs); life sciences (33,500 jobs); and telecommunications (26,000 jobs).
Our industries support 1.2 million jobs in all sectors across Washington.

We are high growth:

Since 1988, innovation employment has more than doubled in our state.
Washington's software and computer services employment increased 756 percent in the same period.
Life sciences employment grew nearly nine percent between 2007 and 2011, while total state employment declined more than three percent.

We are high impact:

Every region of the state benefits from innovation employment; 14 counties have 1,000 or more innovation jobs, with very high concentrations (10,000 or more jobs) in Benton, Clark, King, Pierce, Snohomish and Spokane counties.
Innovation industries generated $838 million in business and occupation taxes to the state in 2009; aggregate B&O and state and local sales and use tax collections from associated economic activity exceed $5 billion.

Our policy priorities:

A public education system focused on achievement and accountability: because education is an economic issue.
Robust research and commercialization programs: because every successful innovation economy as at least one world-class research university at its center.
A business climate that nurtures innovative, entrepreneurial companies: because innovation industries are job-creating industries.

2012 Priorities

1. A public education system focused on achievement and accountability

Prepare our students to be college and career-ready graduates:

Fully implement the State Board of Education’s 24-credit framework for high school graduation.

Adhere to the current implementation schedule for high school graduation requirements in mathematics and science, with no further delays.

Support effective teachers and school leaders:

Fully implement comprehensive teacher and principal evaluation systems that incorporate measures of student growth.

Make performance, not seniority, the primary factor in staffing and compensation decisions.

Expand alternative route certification for teachers and principals, and provide principals with greater authority to manage staffing decisions and resources at the building level.

Create a framework that ensures accountability and promotes innovation:

Implement a statewide assessment and accountability system that measures the college and career-readiness of every student, and is transparent and accessible to the public.

Build on the Innovation Schools legislation to promote innovative models such as STEM academies and high-quality charter schools.

Invest strategically in higher education programs that fuel our innovation economy:

Prioritize investments to increase high-demand, high-impact STEM degree production, primarily focused on engineering, beginning with implementation of the Pegasus proposal.

Prioritize investments to increase high-demand, high-impact STEM degree production.

2. Robust research and commercialization programs

Preserve initiatives that strengthen our state’s competitiveness as a center of innovation:

Maintain the STARS program to attract high-caliber, entrepreneurial faculty to our research universities.

Restore and sustain the state’s commitment of special tobacco settlement dollars to the Life Sciences Discovery Fund.

3. A business climate that nurtures innovative, entrepreneurial companies

Cultivate an environment in which job-creating industries will grow and thrive:

Avoid new revenue mechanisms that would harm the ability of innovation-based companies to create jobs and remain competitive in the global marketplace.

Make permanent the tax incentives for high tech research and development and manufacturing.

Maintain support for Innovate Washington as it consolidates our state’s innovation-based economic development programs and implements the new public-private Clean Energy Partnership.