Hello everyone,

Hollywood legend Robert Redford passed away on Tuesday at the age of 89.

His death reminded me of a powerful Harvard Business Review feature from May 2002: “Changing an Industry from Within: A Conversation with Robert Redford.”

The piece notes that many people dissatisfied with the status quo at work choose one of two paths—leaving or compromising. But some take a third, harder road: reforming the system from within.

The author, Stanford professor Debra Meyerson, coined a term for such change agents: “tempered radicals.” One of her prime examples was Redford himself.

After more than two decades of playing leading men on screen, Redford founded the Sundance Film Festival in 1981 to spotlight unconventional screenwriters and directors. (“Sundance” was his character’s nickname in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.)

Today, Sundance has become a fountainhead of cinematic innovation, launching the careers of Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen brothers. The New Yor…