Purpose It has been established that innovation is determined by leadership and personality characteristics. Further inquiry in this line of research is encouraged. Accordingly, the authors propose inter-correlations between personality, leadership, innovation and job design characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to understand how proactive personality and leader member exchange can derive innovative work behavior, in employees of telecommunication industry, by increasing task feedback and task significance. Design/methodology/approach A deductive approach was used to propose hypotheses. Objective data were collected through a cross sectional survey of 292 samples from three large multinational telecommunication companies located in Islamabad (Pakistan). The survey instrument was a 25-item questionnaire adopted from previously developed and well-validated scales used by prior researches. The survey yielded findings in support of proposed hypotheses of the study. Findings Hierarchical regression analysis yielded findings, which suggested that proactive personality and leader member exchange (LMX) both have a strong positive relationship with innovative work behavior (IWB). Furthermore, task significance and task feedback were found to moderate the aforementioned relationships such that strong leader member exchange and proactive personalities resulted in increased innovative work behavior at higher levels of task feedback and task significance. Practical implications The managers can raise their innovation enhancing strategies one step higher by integrating it with enhanced task feedback and significance. This can be done while working on the relationship of their employees with the leaders/managers and by encouraging proactive personalities at work. Infusing the proposed integrated and holistic framework, of innovative behavior, into their organizations will lead to better retention of key employees, higher job satisfaction and increased loyalty. Originality/value This paper adds significance to the extant literature by examining proactive personality and LMX as determinants of innovative work behavior and the moderating impact of job design characteristics in the context of telecommunication companies, particularly from developing countries, such as Pakistan. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has tested the interplay between a relational concept of leadership (LMX), proactive personality, task significance and task feedback and the outcome variable innovative work behavior.