Bio

Sheena S. Iyengar is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business, Chair of the Management Division, 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 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. 

Food for Thought

August 12, 2023

In July 2023, American union actors and writers joined together in a strike dubbed as “Actors vs. AI.” This underscored the role of artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry, a world where ChatGPT could place screenwriters and AI databases could replace actors.

Since 1987, I have listened to one voice more than any other voices combined. It’s the voice of Perfect Paul, a commercial speech synthesizer that predates the likes of Siri and ALEXA. Whether I’m grading papers, reading scientific articles, or even writing my own books, I use Perfect Paul in my day-to-day life.

However, despite the fact that I rely so heavily on Perfect Paul, I can assure you this: Nothing can replace the human voice. Nothing. If I am reading for pleasure, I listen to an audiobook narrated by a real person. If I want to know how my lecture will sound, I still need a human to read it back to me.

AI blossoms and grows at incredible rates, constantly inundating and infiltrating our lives. Yet, I want to highlight that, no matter how genuine or emotional that AI may sound, it simply cannot nor will not compare with human voice.

June 28, 2023

The Titan — At the heart of this disaster is the claim by Rush, the designer and owner, that regulation stifles innovation. But if you read carefully the comments of experts, “regulation” is not their top concern. They cite precise details of the elements Rush brought together to make his craft. They note how each element did not have a record of success, so they did not qualify to be part of the design. Rush put together elements he wanted, rather than elements that “worked.”

He fell into a common trap about innovation. You don’t just throw together things you think of. You must use elements that have worked before in a different but related situation. That’s a very high standard, and it explains why most innovations fail. Successful innovation comes from new combinations of elements that work — a method I call Think Bigger. The complete combination is greater than the sum of the parts — but only if those parts worked before.

The regulators of deep-sea vessels have blessed many, many innovations over the past half-century, using what we recognize as a Think Bigger standard. Rush’s craft would have failed inspection, not from conservatism of the regulators, but because they have the right method of fostering innovation. They know how to Think Bigger. Rush, fatally, did not.