TECH friendly operates as a specialized engineering firm focused on sustainable urban innovation and smart cities. The company was co-founded by Sergio Serna and Gonzalo Pellejero. Serna, with a background in geography and history, spent many years in consulting before venturing into entrepreneurship, initially with an urban sustainability consultancy before partnering with Pellejero to establish TECH friendly. Their joint objective was to innovate the consulting model. The firm delivers comprehensive services by merging strategic consulting with the development and deployment of technology. It serves a client base that primarily consists of public administrations, including city councils of various sizes, provincial councils, and other government bodies. The B2B model revolves around providing a 360-degree service that guides cities and territories through the entire value chain of strategic planning and sustainable, intelligent urban transformation. This involves identifying urban challenges, creating strategic development plans aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and securing European funding for high-impact urban projects. Revenue is generated through consultancy fees for these strategic services and from the implementation of their technology solutions. A growing area of their B2B involves assisting both public entities in issuing Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) tenders and private companies in competing for them. TECH friendly’s service portfolio is divided into two complementary areas: ‘Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainable Urban Development’ and ‘Technology’. The strategy division focuses on creating strategic urban development plans, fostering urban innovation, and providing specialized advice on smart city planning. The technology unit develops and implements custom hardware and software solutions. These include technologies for smart tourism destinations, such as tourist flow analysis and environmental monitoring, and for intelligent industrial parks. Specific products encompass systems for monitoring mobility, air quality, irrigation, waste containers, and implementing smart lighting. The company is looking to standardize some of its public sector technology products to create scalable and replicable solutions. Keywords: urban innovation, smart cities, strategic consulting, sustainable urban development, public administration technology, European funds, smart city solutions, urban planning, public-private collaboration, IoT, environmental monitoring, mobility solutions, digital transformation, urban data analysis, Public Procurement of Innovation, sustainable infrastructure, local development, Agenda Urbana, smart tourism, govtech
