Understanding what drives innovation and how we as leaders can set the conditions for it to occur.
CAPTAIN J W J WARNE MSc MInstRE
Innovation is a term that is common parlance in both the military and civilian workplace. It is often used as a catch-all to describe anything that 
sits outside the usual way of doing things. But what do we mean by innovation? What does it mean to us as an Army? Is it something new, or is it something that we have done as an organization throughout our history? Is it something that we struggle to do?
Hobart’s Funnies
The Corps of Royal Engineers is no stranger to innovation. In the run-up to the invasion of Normandy during WW2, the 79th Armoured Division, commanded by Maj Gen Percy Hobart (late RE), was preparing to conduct armoured warfare on a scale never seen before or since. One of the issues facing them was the breaching of enemy obstacles, set to hamper the mobility of armoured vehicles. The solution to this problem came 
about as the seed of an idea generated by two junior officers in the Royal Canadian Engineers, namely Lt Donovan and Capt Schortinghaus, who together developed “a concept of using a specially developed tank to carry an engineer assault team and their equipment”. These ideas led to the development of the famous Hobart’s Funnies, highly effective and innovative engineer vehicles. By empowering and listening to these two relatively junior officers and, critically, having the mettle to turn their ideas into practical realities, Hobart and his staff succeeded in developing a capability that not only had a profound impact in WW2 but played a crucial role in influencing the designs of modern-day armoured engineer vehicles.
