Purpose: The focus on innovation as a foundational element of enhanced organisational performance has led to the promoting and valuing of greater levels of employee participation in innovation processes. An emergent concept of employee-driven innovation could be argued to have hindered understandings of the creative and transformative nature of work and the kinds of work and learning practices that all workers engage in as part of their routine occupational practices. The purpose of this paper is to propose that a stronger focus on work-learning as workers’ personal enactment of the collective activities that comprise their occupational practice and its circumstances can clarify the nature of innovation.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on an extended ethnographic study (18 months) of 12 employees from four different workplaces and who were engaged in a variety of different occupational practices.

Findings: The argument is advanced through discussion of four kinds of innovation that were identified through examining the work-learning practices of restaurant, gymnasium, computing and fire service workers. They are personal heuristics, test benching, efficiencies and shared needs.

Originality/value: These innovation forms illuminate personal work-learning practices and offer means of explaining innovation as a foundational factor of work, suggesting that work that supports these work-learning practices can enhance organisational innovation.