You are describing a job I really would hate: no inovation, no try. If you can't even change the package.json without getting everyone angry, it's a horrible team to work in.
Innovation doesnt come from adding a library to the package json.
You are a member of a big team, not a single dev on a pet project. Innovation is on the product, not in your developer experience (unless you are creating a developer tool). Consensus to make big decisions is not the way to limit your developer skills is the way to align a team to achieve a common goal. :)
I love this way of phrasing it. I have these types of arguments with a particular type of colleague often, and this is a missing part of my explanation script.