(One of) the problem with asking permission is that the person you are asking may not care about the issue at all. For all they care, no change is the best solution because it makes their life easier with no appreciable gain. When the person you are seeking permission from has no stake they will often take a passive approach to your request and let it languish until it is no longer worth doing.
The thing about innovation is that there will be a lot of wrong turns and “wasted” time. But none of those wrong turns or time spent coding and developing things that aren’t put into use are wasted. Every single one of them teaches a lesson – either that something works or that it doesn’t, what people care about, what we are good at, that there are more angles to a problem than originally thought, etc. There is no wasted effort in innovation other than time spent pushing paper and seeking permission.
The first rule is to deliver. Put things out into the world quickly to see if it works. It won’t always work, but if you worry about that then you will never accomplish anything. For every moderately successful release there are hundreds of complete failures. Those failures are the grandparents of the success though. Lending their lessons, their path and their isolated success to ultimately lead to something bigger. And for every completely successful release there are many, many moderately successful ones that eventually spark that one special one.