[nnadams]

I can second this one. Not necessarily your personal time but at least once your assigned work is on track or completed. Not rare to hear people say "this past weekend I was playing around..." though.

If you have a good idea for a feature, product, or a new system to improve your team, it's unlikely there will be time in the schedule for it. In my experience you spend your extra time playing around, show it off, and wait for a decision maker to take interest.

Like the original comment said, I've personally never seen someone be assigned time to innovate from scratch. Once a POC already exists folks jump on the bandwagon though.