On the contrary, it is a brilliant tactic, and one which had served many military commanders beforehand, including the Khans in Mongolia, and the Romans.

The corps system allowed for the army to be subdivided into smaller units, so that orders passing down the chain of command would reach the ranks quicker, with no loss of clarity.

Imagine for example, if you have 10,000 men in your army, divided into 5 groups of 2,000. If you give the order to engage, 2,000 men will be asked to move as one, and will be looking to their commander for orders.

If however, you have further decentralized command, then the order will pass down quicker and more fluidly. Rather than having 2,000 men trying to fall back when you might only need a quarter of that number to do so, you can have individual companies pulling back as one, and bolstering the defence elsewhere.

It also allowed for greater maneuverability pre-battle. An army could be divided up into smaller groups with those groups sent in multiple directions, immediately. If you have no system in place that has your men divided as such, it's going to take a long time for your men to divide themselves into several similar sized groups.

Having the corps system transformed Napoleon's army from a lumbering mass of men, into a fluid and dynamic collection of companies, allowed for more precise movements and control.

EDIT: This higher level of control allowed Napoleon to split his army so that they might advance quicker, while maintaining relative closeness in the event of meeting an opponent. By splitting, they could also maneuver sections of the army to reinforce other sections, making one flank stronger and more resistant to attack in a matter of minutes. In the old style armies, this was impossible. Perhaps the best part of the new movements was the ability to lock down an enemy army, by engaging with one portion of the army, while the rest came up in reserve. This allowed engagements to happen quickly, speeding up warfare and locking enemy forces into position.

Being as successful as he was, Napoleon's tactics are bound to reflect on those who came before him. Whatever works is bound to be used, so Napoleon may not have done it first.

HE was known to study very carefully the routes of his troops and the enemy's and to plan on what decisions the enemy was most likely to make and what would be the timetable for all this. He kept very organized records, using basically note cards and envelopes that he kept with him in his headquarters/carriage.

He is famous for his use of artillery, and putting into large concentrations so he could use it en masse. He may have been the first to do this. But then again, artillery is what the French were always good at. They usually had the best artillery in Europe going back probably to the days of Louis XIV.

The Napoleonic wars are famous for the use of skirmisher tactics, which had not been seen much in Europe because most of these older monarchies did not want rank and file to be operating as individuals on the battlefield. However, this was not Napoleon's invention; this was basic tactic adopted by French revolutionaries who had a different believe in the value of the rank and file.

YOu also hear a lot about combined arms, where artillery, cavalry and infantry are all used in conjunction in order to defeat enemy formations. Many wargames try to model this sort of thing with Rock/Scissors/Paper type of models. I am not sure if Napoleon really invented this or it was a product of the times. Certainly cavalry formations were enlarged and artillery was evolving at this time. Napoleon probably just doing it better than other commanders.

He was also known to make good use of terrain to operate as a screen. Such as using woods or rivers to hide a flanking movement. Also as has been mentioned, the use of several avenues of approach to rapidly converge on a point is famous with him. See e.g the Ulm campaign of 1804. However even George Washington did stuff like that at Germantown as well as the crossing of the Delaware. Napoleon didnt invent that.

He started out as an artillery officer so maybe he developed different tactics for that arm. Otherwise I am not sure he was so much of an innnovator rather than just someone who took what was given him, applied logic and probability to it and did it very well.