Laura Olcina has spent nearly 30 years dismantling the rigid conventions of Spain’s technology sector, and now the country’s highest innovation honor has landed on her desk. The 2026 National Innovation Award recognizes a leadership career built on accessibility, trust, and a stubborn insistence that real change means more than digitizing paperwork.
Olcina directs ITI, the Valencia-based technology center she first joined as an intern in 1998. By age 29, she ran the organization, which then employed fewer than ten people. Under her watch, ITI now counts over 350 professionals and pulls in annual revenues above €20 million, operating from Paterna, the Universitat Politècnica de València, and Torre Juana in Alicante.
The path included missteps. A facial recognition push between 2005 and 2007 found buyers overseas but none domestically. Financial crises forced temporary layoffs. Those setbacks shaped her philosophy. Innovation, Olcina argues, must alter business models and processes, not simply convert forms to PDF. And it needs staying power beyond the lifecycle of a public grant.
Her influence extends well past ITI. She leads the Spanish Federation of Technology Centers, or FEDIT, representing 56 organizations and more than 11,000 workers. She also chairs the Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation and holds a board seat at CDTI, the state innovation agency. From those perches, she pushes for policies that account for different starting lines. FEDIT data shows each euro invested in technology centers yields €11 in income and €26.40 in sales.
Meanwhile, Olcina pursues a doctoral thesis on artificial intelligence and disputes the notion that Spanish firms have embraced AI broadly. She puts actual adoption near 20%, with wide variation by region and industry. The Valencian Community outperforms the national average, yet she notes a frustrating pattern where local companies have acquired ITI-developed technology through foreign middlemen. The domestic ecosystem, she warns, often fails to recognize what it already has.
On talent, women represent 28% of ITI’s staff. That figure looks modest until compared with the 12 to 13% of female computer engineering graduates nationwide. Olcina admits she once dismissed gender as a non-issue, feeling more conspicuous as an economist among engineers. Years later, she ensures ITI sends women trainers into outreach programs to reshape perceptions of who belongs in tech.
A sign in her office reads “More Lego, less ego.” She describes herself as a single piece in a larger construction, delegating heavily and avoiding public criticism of officials. Political offers have come and gone. She prefers connecting public, private, and academic worlds.
The award lands after years of unpaid extra work, constant travel, and the weight of running a large organization without reliable funding. For Olcina, it marks a milestone, not a finish line. Spain’s technology centers still grapple with scaling innovation, keeping talent, and linking research to industry. Her recognition underscores the distance already covered, and the ground still left to cross.
