A person with one foot inside the system and one foot outside the system can do magic.

They have leverage to change the system directly, but also a vantage point beyond the short-term horizon of the system.

However, that person will look crazy (or even dangerous) to people who are entirely inside the system.

If there's a powerful entity with a hammer inside the system, the person straddling the boundary might be in danger.

But if there's no one with a big hammer in the system, then the person only has to fear people thinking they're kooky, not wanting to remove them from the system.

This is one of the reasons open-ended systems are best for game-changing disruptive innovation.