An article by Dean van Leeuwen
In 1997, Sam McCracken began his career at Nike, operating a forklift in a distribution centre. He was not part of the executive team. He did not have a formal innovation mandate. He was not leading a transformation office, armed with a slide deck, a budget and a five-year roadmap.
But he saw something that mattered.
McCracken, a citizen of the Fort Peck Sioux, had watched Indigenous communities wrestle with serious health challenges. He understood that sport, movement, culture and belonging could be part of the answer. So, he asked the question that sits at the heart of all meaningful transformation: is there a better way?
That question became the seed of Nike N7.
What began as community-based activity grew into one of Nike’s most distinctive purpose-led initiatives. Today, Nike says the N7 Fund invests in organisations serving Indigenous communities across North America, with grants and related support totalling $13.4 million to more than 300 organisations since 2009. Since 2022, Nike has invested $625,000 annually through the fund to support Indigenous youth sport.
The story has continued beyond Nike. After more than 28 years with the company, McCracken has launched the Sam McCracken Youth Project, a Native-led non-profit focused on the mental, physical and cultural wellbeing of Indigenous youth. Its first five-year goal is to serve more than 5,000 young people across 30 tribal communities.
This is what I mean by a transformational intrapreneur.
The term is slightly long, but it is useful. A transformational intrapreneur is someone inside an organisation who sees the gap between what the business is today and what it could help make possible. They connect personal conviction with organisational capability. They turn assets such as brand, technology, capital, talent, trust and reach into progress that matters.
This is not the same as being a change champion. A change champion supports an agenda that already exists. A transformational intrapreneur helps create the agenda. They sense an unmet need, connect it to strategic relevance, build belief, mobilise others and turn an idea into a movement inside the system. That distinction matters.
We are living through a period of extraordinary technological acceleration. AI is moving from experimentation to workflow redesign. Agentic systems are emerging. The cost of prototyping, analysis and execution is falling. Yet the central challenge of transformation remains stubbornly human.
McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI research found that nearly nine in ten respondents say their organisations are regularly using AI, but most have not embedded it deeply enough into workflows and processes to realise enterprise-level benefits. Only 39% reported EBIT impact at the enterprise level, and around one-third said their companies had begun to scale AI programmes.
BCG makes a similar point in its work on AI transformation. Companies scale faster when AI is treated as a CEO-level priority, when leaders communicate a compelling “why”, and when managers model the change in daily work rather than leaving it as a corporate mandate.
In other words, transformation does not fail because organisations lack tools. It fails because they lack protagonists.
They launch pilots without belief. They talk about purpose without proximity. They build strategy decks without stories. They invest in platforms but underinvest in the cultural conditions that allow people to turn possibility into progress.
Transformational intrapreneurs close that gap.
They begin with a clear endgame. McCracken’s endgame was not to launch a shoe or a campaign. It was to help Indigenous youth become healthier, more active and more visible. The destination was human enough to inspire people and strategic enough to matter to Nike.
They bring radical ambition, but they do not confuse ambition with theatre. McCracken did not start by asking for a business unit. He started with community events, conversations, relationships, and practical action. The ambition was bold, but the first steps were close enough to begin.
They practise sensing and synchronisation. They listen to the communities they want to serve and the organisation they want to move. N7 worked because it connected Indigenous values and lived experience with Nike’s belief in the power of sport. It was not bolted onto the business. It found energy inside the business.
They make the work meaningful to the people who matter most. Transformation scales when people can see and feel the impact. Designers, athletes, tribal leaders, executives, community organisers and young people could all find themselves in the N7 story. That is how a personal conviction became an organisational platform.
This is the leadership challenge of the next decade. The future will not be shaped by transformation offices alone. It will not be delivered by AI tools, operating models or new capability frameworks in isolation. It will be shaped by people inside organisations who are given the permission, protection and platform to act.
Leaders therefore need to do more than sponsor change. They need to create the conditions in which transformational intrapreneurs can emerge everywhere. That means psychological safety for early ideas, air cover from corporate politics, disciplined experimentation, better storytelling and a clear link between meaningful impact and commercial value.
Sam McCracken’s story still matters because it reminds us that transformation rarely begins as a polished business case. More often, it begins with someone who notices a problem others have normalised, feels responsible enough to act and believes the organisation can be used differently.
The future of work will not belong to those who simply adapt to change.
It will belong to those who learn how to ignite transformation from within.
At TomorrowToday, this is exactly the kind of thinking Dean van Leeuwen brings into rooms with leadership teams – through keynotes, workshops and strategic conversations that help organisations create the conditions for transformation to take root. Contact us and we will connect you with Dean.
As he writes: “Transformation rarely begins as a polished business case. More often it begins with someone who notices a problem others have normalised, feels responsible enough to act and believes the organisation can be used differently.”
Dean van Leeuwen, author of today’s article, helps leaders turn growth plans into delivered results by spotting where value leaks and where teams get stuck in analysis, pilots, and busywork.
He advises executive teams on strategy and change, has worked with L’Oréal, Rio Tinto, GSK, Deloitte, John Lewis, M&S and others, and co-hosts the Elephants in the Boardroom podcast.