Yeah I think at all levels to acquire the complexity of life you need to have a process of innovation supplying whatever variables are possible and selection from among those. The innovation part is, I would think, iterative and similar to reproduction. However, the reproduction we know with DNA etc and the incomplete copying during it in order to achieve the 'innovation' may not be absolutely necessary, especially under very stable and unchanging environmental conditions.
The innovation could come from some other source. I keep envisioning crystal growth or something like silicone chip manufacturing processes where only the extremities are modified. New layers to the lattice would have to vary and thus supply the novelty which would then be kept or not kept. Obviously a leap has to occur somewhere in that process to get the kind of huge chain reaction life that we know.
The machine planet that perfected Voyager and made it V'Ger I can only imagine had to start out much simpler, and gain its high level of complexity via reproduction, which you might call iterative innovation.