The Art of Choosing

Speaker

Sheena Iyengar

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.

Field

Business Administration

Subtitled

Subtitled in Japanese