get put on a project that's failing and make it succeed. My first boss at Google did this - he was on a project that was going nowhere, introduced a bunch of modern software-development methods to the team, and got the project unstuck.
In order to do that, you need a political protector who can guarantee, in advance, that performance reviews will come out in your favor no matter what happens. There's just too much risk for it to make sense otherwise.
If you have such a protector, then you're an unusually lucky person and most of my advice isn't for you.
You take the risk because you're secure enough in yourself that it doesn't really matter whether you succeed or fail or if you get that promotion anyway. If it doesn't work out - so what? You miss out on that promotion, but you still drew a salary the whole time. That's a lot more than you get if you found a startup and it doesn't work out.
My former boss had no such guarantee when he took the initiative with that project - if it had failed, he would've remained a SWE 3 forever (or, well, at least until he succeeded with some other project). I had no such guarantee when I volunteered for the 2010 search visual redesign - and I didn't get promoted, though I did get my picture in Businessweek and a reputation internally as a person who gets shit done. I also had no such guarantee when I volunteered to help start Google's Authorship program, but I did get promoted for that one, and a nice pick of future assignments. And since then, I've had a major project I initiated (which I'd hoped would be my ticket to staff and senior staff) get canceled and a major open-source 20% project get put in limbo. This blows, but that's life. I was an entrepreneur before Google; some of my projects have been mild successes (enough to get me professional reputation but no money) and many of them got me far less than I got at Google for sinking a year of my time into this failed research project.
What you're asking for is rewards without having to run any risk, which is a generally unattractive quality in a person. There are jobs that give you this bargain, at least until the company goes under - you could be a code-monkey at a Fortune 500, or an accountant, or a unionized laborer. But that wouldn't give you respect, which I think is what you're looking for. People respect folks that are willing to take risks for what they believe in, and accept the consequences when those risks don't pan out.
In order to do that, you need a political protector who can guarantee, in advance, that performance reviews will come out in your favor no matter what happens. There's just too much risk for it to make sense otherwise.
If you have such a protector, then you're an unusually lucky person and most of my advice isn't for you.