Dr. Sylvia Xihui Liu has a good mix of academic and industrial experience. In Nov, 2011, she was appointed as visiting assistant professor, School of Design, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where she obtained PhD degree in 2010 supervised by Prof John Heskett. Before her PhD study, she was design manager of Nova Design, the largest design team who can speak Chinese in the world. And her consultancy service covers product design, branding and design strategy with a prominent list of clients, including Siemens, General Motor, Yamaha, Suzuki, Faw, Electrolux, BBK, Media, Konka, etc.. She achieved numbers of international design awards, such as IDEA, iF and Reddot.

She keeps a creed of research, “theory-building through empirical study,” and manages to balance academic research with industrial practice. Keep design management capability as research focus, she extends the topic to innovation capability of firm, industries and ecosystem, particular the changed paradigm from industry economy to knowledge economy. Her research outcomes not only include papers in top design journals, but also innovative business model of firm and industry, as well as design policy. Since 2013, She has been invited as adviser for developing national design policy of China related to Made in China 2025 and OBOR.