If you're lucky enough to work (or have worked) within a modern technology-based business, you should be used to having innovation as an important and valued input for your product backlog and overall roadmap. Innovation is something that can be very powerful when it comes to implementing CD and DevOps, especially when this innovation comes from the grass-roots level.
Many of the world's most successful and most-used products have come from innovation, so you should help build a culture throughout the business where innovation is recognized as a good and worthwhile thing rather than a risky way of advancing a product. Most engineers thrive, or at least enjoy, innovation, and truth be told, this was most probably one of the major drives for them choosing to become engineers—this and the fine wine, fast...