From what time we wake up to what we choose to wear to whom we marry, choice is a defining feature of the human experience. Sheena Iyengar, S.T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, has spent decades studying the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms behind decision-making—why we choose, how choices impact our happiness, and whether more choices empower or overwhelm us. Blending empirical research with real-world applications, Iyengar challenges common assumptions to show how complex our decision-making processes truly are. Are more choices enabling or crippling? Does careful planning always help us make better decisions? How does our environment affect our preferences? Her research spans healthcare, consumer behavior, medicine, leadership, and innovation to uncover the hidden dynamics of choice. By deepening our understanding of the forces that drive decisions, Iyengar equips us to choose with greater awareness, confidence, and clarity—whether that means exercising our freedom to choose well or recognizing when we would rather not choose at all.
SPEAKER 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 innovation.
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 and #3 Bestselling Business Book on Amazon) and Think Bigger: How to Innovate (2023 Gold Medal recipient for the Axiom Business Book Awards and Thinkers50 Top 10 Management Book of the Year). Her recorded TED Talks have received a collective 7 million views. 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 her “Jam Study,” which revolutionized how we approach product offerings and customer curation. The study revealed that too many choices reduce customer purchasing and corporate growth. Since then, over 1,000 studies on choice overload have been conducted, leading to the widely recognized 80/20 rule, which shows that 80% of a company’s outcomes (outputs and revenue) come from 20% of causes (inputs and choices). Leveraging her expertise in choice, Iyengar has advised hundreds of companies across business, technology, consumer retail, media, consulting, investing, and STEM, helping them transform decision-making and enhance stakeholder experiences.
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, teach customer research and feedback methods, Think Bigger concentrates on how creative ideas form in your mind and teaches a six-step process for innovation.
In 2024, Iyengar was awarded the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) Scientific Impact Award. 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.
