Eileen Burbidge: ‘I thought I’d return in a year. Now I see Silicon Valley as too insular’

The digital adviser for both David Cameron and Boris Johnson talks about diversity and success

You're the digital representative on David Cameron's business advisory panel. Should digital be seen as a separate sector?
While I'm not a full hipster with a beard and tattoos, I am the outlier on the panel. However, I'm quite certain that in 10 years there'll be just no such thing as a "digital representative". It's going to sound completely superfluous and redundant to talk about digital in any business I think. Particularly when users will have digital as part of their DNA.

If you're the digital representative does that make all the other panel members a bit analogue?
Lots of traditional industries started by doing digital as part of their customer engagement, advertising and brand, but now they are having to think about how it will transform their businesses, their core propositions. It's like changing the engines on an airliner while it's mid-air. It really is the second industrial revolution, it is on that scale.