This paper examines "innovative" governance in the English further education and skills (FE) sector. Drawing on the work of Lyotard, Foucault and Ball, the paper explores how practitioners enacted innovative governance in a sector facing increasingly performative conditions. Analysis identified the key category of opportunity and risk where innovative governance was seen as paramount in leading change and changing practice. Innovative governance was not a "golden bullet", rather, innovation was a complex set of interrelated understandings, strategies, values and norms. The paper concludes by suggesting that, in the cases reported here, innovative governance was at the forefront of defending the very essence of FE during a time of extraordinary funding, and philosophical, challenge.