Smiling woman with long dark hair in white attire

Sheena S. Iyengar, Ph.D.

S.T. Lee Professor of Business and Academic Director, Innovation Hub Columbia Business School

World-Renowned Expert on Choice & Innovation

Sheena S. Iyengar, a world expert on choice and innovation, is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business and the Academic Director of the Innovation Hub at the Columbia Business School. 

Iyengar is the recipient of the Thinkers50 2023 Innovation Award and is the author of two award-winning books. Her first, The Art of Choosing, was the 2010 Financial Times Business Book of the Year and ranked in the Top Ten Business Books on Amazon. Her second book, Think Bigger: How to Innovate, was the 2023 Gold Medal recipient for the Axiom Business Book Awards and Thinkers50 Top 10 Management Book of the Year.  

  • Iyengar’s recorded TED Talks have received a collective seven million views. She regularly makes top-tier media appearances, including 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 found that too many choices reduce customer purchasing and corporate growth. Her study transformed the way products are offered in the marketplace and how they are curated for customers.   
     
    Since the publication of the Jam Study, there have been more than 1,000 studies on the phenomena of choice overload. This led to the pervasive 80/20 rule, which observes that 80% of a company’s outcomes (outputs and revenue) come from 20% of causes (inputs and choices). 

    Iyengar has applied her expertise in choice to advise hundreds of companies, spanning business, technology, consumer retail, media, consulting, investing, and STEM – helping to transform 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. The Think Bigger method concentrates on how creative ideas form in the mind and teaches a six-step method for innovation.  

    Iyengar holds a dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania, with a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences. She received her PhD from Stanford University. 

    As a blind woman, Iyengar intuitively used Think Bigger in her personal life to find her calling, and now strives to inspire others to do the same.