This chapter provides an overview of how ELT materials can be improved through creative mindsets and innovative efforts, as well as through materials personalisation and localisation. It is not, however, a review of current approaches to the ELT curriculum but mainly offers innovative insights to enrich current ways of developing course materials. It addresses the three main areas covered by this book, namely creativity, innovations and teacher–learner involvement in coursebook design.

One important obligation in the quest for successful English language education is to create and apply new experience in course materials. As the theme of this book indicates, materials writers are constantly challenged by the need to produce novel ideas (creativity) and implement them via coursebook design (innovation). Innovation in general refers to new procedure (Markee, 1992) and untried methodology (Hutchison & Torres, 1994) that bring about improvement (Nicholls, 1983).

Innovators are often defined as agents of change (Hall & Hewings, 2001) and for change to happen, materials developers need to understand the learning process. Although this book is about materials, it places the learner at the heart of much of the discussion. As Hae-ok Park highlights in Chapter 7, learners are active participants in research and in the practice of innovative problem solving. The implementation of creative elements, or innovation, can be understood in two ways. One is that materials themselves need to be creative in taking novel content from diverse resources such as literature, drama, poetry and multimedia resources. The second is that materials need to be innovatively employed through flexible tasks, original combinations and multiple options.

This introductory discussion is written to interact with the chapters in the book not only by capturing the essence of what is being raised but also by commenting on those issues. Although readers can interpret every topic in each chapter by themselves, the commentary below might provoke further thoughts and trigger more in-depth reflection. The key arguments in the contributing chapters somehow defy current practice in order to bring about positive transformation in materials development.