After our last staff family meeting of 2025, where I mentioned our Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) 40th anniversary series is ending and there’ll be a new focus for next year, my engineering colleague Patrick Hope (in pic) stopped me on the way out.
He’d been thinking… and showed me an old Red Bull F1 video – The Life of a Bolt. And he suggested we could do something similar with a satellite part. Not a grand system. Not a mission. Just a single component, quietly doing its job.
It’s easy to assume that in an engineering company you want engineers to focus on building things and solving technical problems – and leave the ‘creative stuff’ to others.
But being technical doesn’t mean they can’t be creative. Often it’s exactly why they are.
There’s an idea I like about success coming from the agency of others; surrounding yourself with good people and then paying attention when they speak.
Patrick’s on to something here. Not because the suggestion is fully formed – but because he felt comfortable sharing it before it was.
So we’ll build it up together – and see where it goes.
Andrew Greenhalgh 