This volume shows how conceptual design can be approached systematically to create breakthrough products and improve existing ones under intense competition. It focuses on the fuzzy front end, where early decisions about product functions and architecture can strongly influence later competitiveness. The Innovative Design Thinking framework draws on propositional logic, Axiomatic Design Theory, and Relative Complexity Theory to make conceptual reasoning explicit, traceable, and teachable. The volume presents methods for concept formation, categorization, selection, zigzagging, root-cause diagnosis, partial redesign, and sequence management, together with human-led, AI-supported conceptual design agents and application examples. It is intended for advanced students, researchers, engineers, designers, product developers, and system architects seeking practical methods for developing logically feasible, functionally simple, physically viable, and competitive product concepts.

Professor Stephen C-Y. Lu is the permanent holder of the David Packard Chair in Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering. He is a full professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and Computer Science. He directs USC’s Master of Science Program in Product Development Engineering, the Viterbi iPodia Program, and the iPodia Global Alliance.

During an academic career spanning more than four decades, Professor Lu has contributed significantly to product development, conceptual design, collaborative engineering, technological innovation, and engineering education. His work combines rigorous engineering science with an understanding of how people, technologies, and markets interact. He has promoted new product development beyond incremental improvement toward breakthrough products, systems, and platforms that create new possibilities for customers, industries, and society.

His research has advanced innovative design thinking, engineering collaboration through negotiation, socio-technical design frameworks, AI-enabled knowledge processing, and methods for managing product-development complexity. He has published more than 350 technical papers, chapters, and books, delivered keynote addresses at international conferences, and held editorial leadership positions, including Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Collaborative Engineering.

Professor Lu’s career integrates academic research, industrial practice, and international collaboration. He has held visiting or distinguished professorships at MIT, the Technical University of Berlin, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, RWTH Aachen University, and other leading institutions. His advisory and consulting experience includes Lockheed Martin, Ford, Daimler-Benz, Digital Equipment Corporation, MAXXIS Tires, and other global industrial organizations. He chaired the Technical Advisory Committee for Lockheed Martin’s SAVE/JAST program, which contributed to the development of the F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft.

Professor Lu is an elected Fellow of CIRP, the International Academy for Production Engineering, and a Senior Fellow of ASME, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. His honors include the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, Alexander von Humboldt Senior U.S. Scientist Award, Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, IFEES Duncan Fraser Award for Global Excellence in Engineering Education, Microsoft Global Educator Award, and ASEE Chester F. Carlson Award for Innovation in Engineering Education.

Professor Lu is also an internationally recognized innovator in global education. Through his iPodia initiative and its vision of “learning together for a better world,” he created a “classrooms-without-borders” paradigm connecting students across institutions, countries, and cultures through collaborative learning from their home campuses. This glocal approach enables direct cross-cultural engagement, helping students move beyond content-centered instruction and conventional e-learning to gain contextual insights and develop mutual understanding through iLearning.

In Breakthrough Product Development, Professor Lu integrates decades of research, teaching, industrial collaboration, and international experience into a systematic, practice-oriented framework for developing products that create customer value and initiate new market opportunities.