Sheena Iyengar

NEW EXCLUSIVE
  • Columbia Business School Professor
  • Director, Global Leadership Matrix
  • Author, 'Think Bigger' & 'The Art of Choosing'

Columbia Business School professor Dr. Sheena Iyengar is a world expert on choice and decision-making. Her book The Art of Choosing received the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year and inspired an eponymous TED Talk.  Her subsequent book, Think Bigger, was a Gold Medal Winner of the 2024 Axiom Business Book Award. Her research is regularly cited in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist as well as in popular books, such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. Dr. Iyengar has also appeared on television, including The Today Show, The Daily Show, and Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN. Her TED Talks have collectively received 7M views and her research continues to inform markets, businesses, and individuals around the world.

Dr. Iyengar has been named a member of Thinkers50, a global ranking of the top 50 management thinkers. She won the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Core Teaching from Columbia Business School in 2012 and was named one of the World’s Best B-School Professors by Poets and Quants. She has also given keynotes and consulted for companies as wide-ranging as Deloitte, Google, Bloomberg, Blizzard Entertainment, J.P. Morgan & Chase, and The North Face.

 


Sheena  Iyengar headshot
Past Hosts Include:
  • Ernst & Young
  • TED
  • Google
  • KPMG
  • The North Face
  • Deutsche Bank
  • St. Joseph's Health Centre Foundation
  • International Association of Privacy Professionals
  • Publisher's Weekly
Rave Reviews About Sheena Iyengar
Iyengar inspires the creative problem-solver in all of us.

Think Bigger: Sheena Iyengar and Lesley Stahl | Columbia Business School - Get Sharable Link
Talks & Conversations with Sheena Iyengar
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Think Bigger with AI: How to Fuel Your Best Ideas

Many of us want that next great idea, but we often forget an important part: how? Columbia Business School's DR. SHEENA IYENGAR has developed the Think Bigger framework, a six-step method for innovation that helps answer this question. Iyengar's work with AI, particularly through her "Choice Mapper" ...

Many of us want that next great idea, but we often forget an important part: how?

Columbia Business School's DR. SHEENA IYENGAR has developed the Think Bigger framework, a six-step method for innovation that helps answer this question. Iyengar's work with AI, particularly through her "Choice Mapper" tool, demonstrates how AI can enhance our ability to innovate and make better choices. This talk explores the intersection of AI and human creativity, showing how technology can be leveraged to unlock our full potential.

Thinking Bigger: Inspiring Innovation

Where do our best ideas come from? In her course and book Think Bigger, DR. SHEENA IYENGAR presents a six-step method that draws on insights from neurological and cognitive science to unlock creative potential. This talk explores how anyone can generate innovative ideas by putting their mind to work ...

Where do our best ideas come from?

In her course and book Think Bigger, DR. SHEENA IYENGAR presents a six-step method that draws on insights from neurological and cognitive science to unlock creative potential. This talk explores how anyone can generate innovative ideas by putting their mind to work effectively.

How To Dream: Unlock Greater Creative Potential

Have you ever been told to grow up, get your head on straight, and stop dreaming? Luckily, we can learn to dream in a way that is not only intentional and adaptive but also inventive.  Drawing on her extensive research on choice and her unique experience, DR. SHEENA IYENGAR guides audiences through ...

Have you ever been told to grow up, get your head on straight, and stop dreaming? Luckily, we can learn to dream in a way that is not only intentional and adaptive but also inventive. 

Drawing on her extensive research on choice and her unique experience, DR. SHEENA IYENGAR guides audiences through an iterative process to enable dreaming with greater hope, courage, and purpose. 

For Leadership: The Art of Choosing

In The Art of Choosing, Columbia Business School professor DR. SHEENA IYENGAR draws from her award-winning, discipline-spanning research to explore the "3 Cs" of choosing: Choice Overload, Culture, and Creativity. Iyengar delves into the intricacies of how we make choices and how those choices shape ...

In The Art of Choosing, Columbia Business School professor DR. SHEENA IYENGAR draws from her award-winning, discipline-spanning research to explore the "3 Cs" of choosing: Choice Overload, Culture, and Creativity. Iyengar delves into the intricacies of how we make choices and how those choices shape our lives. This talk covers a range of decisions, from the trivial to the profound, offering surprising insights into our decision-making processes and how we can improve them.

Key Takeaways from Dr. Iyengar’s speech:

  • Find out what effective leaders need to know about choice and how to choose your way to success. 
  • Understand the differences in how people perceive choice, and its effect on what people want and how they act. 
  • Learn the effect that the ability to choose has on job performance. For example, Iyengar cited Google’s policy of allowing employees to work on their own projects for 20 percent of the time. Fifty percent of Google’s new products, including Gmail and Google Voice, have come out of employee projects. 
  • Discover how to give people the kinds of choices that will motivate them.
  • Recognize how choice is viewed in different cultural contexts. 

Making Meaningful Choices to Spark Innovation

DR. SHEENA IYENGAR can’t grant you special powers, but she can help you understand the inner workings of choice. In particular, she can help you lead by choice, revealing what effective leaders need to know about choice and how to choose your way to success. Sheena believes that all of us can develo ...

DR. SHEENA IYENGAR can’t grant you special powers, but she can help you understand the inner workings of choice. In particular, she can help you lead by choice, revealing what effective leaders need to know about choice and how to choose your way to success. Sheena believes that all of us can develop and benefit from leadership skills, no matter what title or position we hold, by learning to choose wisdom, compassion, and humility.

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Columbia Business School’s Dr. Sheena Iyengar shares the impact of her findings of her book, ‘Think Bigger'

In a groundbreaking new Columbia Business School course called "Think Bigger," DR. SHEENA IYENGAR created a six-step method for teaching people how to take advantage of lessons learned from neurological and cognitive science to put our minds to work when generating our best ideas. The complementary book, Think Bigger, was a Gold Medal Winner of the 2024 Axiom Business Book Award. In live engagements, Dr. Iyengar offers an innovative evidence-backed method for generating big ideas, leading a workshop to prove anybody can produce revolutionary ideas.

Watch Dr. Sheena Iyengar speak at the University of Hawai'i >>

Watch Dr. Sheena Iyengar's TED Talk >>

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Biography

Sheena S. Iyengar is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business and the Academic Director of the Innovation Hub at the Columbia Business School. She is one of the world’s experts on choice and problem-solving.

Iyengar is the recipient of the Thinkers50 2023 Innovation Award and the author of two award-winning books, The Art of Choosing (2010 Financial Times Business Book of the Year, Amazon #3 Bestselling Business Book) and Think Bigger: How to Innovate (2024 Gold Medalist for the Axiom Business Book Award and the Thinkers50 Top 10 Management Book). Her recorded TED Talks have received a collective 7 million views and she regularly appears in top tier media such as The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, CNBC, CNN, The BBC, and NPR.

Iyengar is famously recognized for her “Jam Study,” which transformed the way we think about products offered in the marketplace and how we curate them for customers. Her “Jam Study” found that too many choices reduces customer purchasing and corporate growth. Since the Jam Study, there have been 1,000+ studies on the phenomena of choice overload which led to the pervasive 80/20 rule, observing that 80% of a company’s outcomes (outputs and revenue) come from 20% of causes (inputs and choices). She has applied her expertise in choice to advise hundreds of companies spanning business, technology, consumer retail, media, consulting, investing, and STEM to transform their decision-making criteria and elevate the stakeholder experience.

Iyengar created the Think Bigger method for innovative thinking and problem-solving based on recent advances in neuro- and cognitive sciences. Where prevailing methods for innovation, such as Design Thinking, teaches methods of customer research and feedback, Think Bigger concentrates on how creative ideas form in your mind and teaches a six-step method for innovation.

She was ranked by the Thinkers50 as a Top 10 Management Thinker in 2023. In 2022, Iyengar was ranked by the Asian American Business Development Center as one of the 50 Outstanding Asian Americans in Business. She received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the CBS Executive MBA Class of 2021. In 2012, Iyengar was recognized by Poets and Quants as one of the Best Business School Professors for her work merging academia with practice. In 2002, she was the only social scientist to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the Office of the President.

Iyengar holds a dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania, with a BS in Economics from the Wharton School and a BA in psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences. She received her PhD from Stanford University. In her personal life, as a blind woman, Iyengar intuitively used Think Bigger to find her calling and strives to inspire others to do the same.