What if you've been overwhelmed with too many other things to do and you don't have any bandwidth for creativity? What if your boss is such a micro-manager and so bad at delegating things that you never feel explicitly nor even implicitly empowered to take ownership of anything? What if all of the things you do when taking initiative, or your requests for taking on more responsibility are completely ignored? What if your relationship to the company is more of a mercenary than a partner because that's the way the company wants it, even though you hope for more?

All of these things will kill the soul of problem solvers.