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Sheena Iyengar speaker
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Sheena Iyengar

Empowering innovation and decision-making, a world-leading expert on choice transforms how we think, solve problems, and achieve growth
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About

Gender: Female
Nationality: United States
Languages: English, French
Travels from: United States

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    Biography Highlights

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

    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.

    Videos

    Media, podcast appearances and interviews

    Speaking videos

    Popular Talks

    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.

    Available: In person, Virtually

    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.

    Available: In person, Virtually

    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.

    Available: In person, Virtually

    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.
    Available: In person, Virtually

    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.

    Available: In person, Virtually

    Sheena'S

    TESTIMONIALS

    Iyengar inspires the creative problem-solver in all of us.

    Michael Bloomberg

    Founder,

    Bloomberg & Bloomberg Philanthropies

    Thank you for a terrific session last week with our management team! Everyone absolutely LOVED your speech - and the workshops were a fantastic way to apply the learning to our specific brand needs. Thank you for taking the time to organize insightful questions/topics, and guide our team through a well thought out brainstorming framework.

    The North Face

    An intimate, beautifully written, and deeply compelling book that examines both the art and science of making wise decisions. Choosing to read it should be the easiest choice you ever make.

    Dan Gilbert

    Author of Stumbling on Happiness,

    Sheena Iyengar's work on choice and how our minds deal with it has been groundbreaking, repeatedly surprising, and enormously important. She is someone we need to listen to.

    Atul Gawande

    Author of Complications and Better,

    No one asks better questions, or comes up with more intriguing answers.

    Malcolm Gladwell

    Author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers,

    While the last decade has seen an outpouring of books on choice (many of which cite Iyengar's work, including Malcolm Gladwell's Blink), few can get as close to the topic as Iyengar, whose riveting research and insight comprise her new book, The Art of Choosing.

    Body & Soul Magazine

    Columbia Business School professor Sheena Iyengar has spent the past 18 years studying how we make decisions and the ways our choices affect our lives. Here she probes choices ranging from soda brands to spouses and explains often surprising research on choice. From a survey showing that arranged marriages may produce more long-term happiness than love-marriages to a study concluding that people are more likely to buy jam if they're offered fewer flavors to choose from, The Art of Choosing is filled with insights likely to leave readers more careful about the choices they make.

    Worth Magazine

    Prominent social psychologist Iyengar begins her unique and invigorating study of choice by telling the story of a man who survived for 76 days stranded alone in the middle of the ocean. He chose to live, Iyengar tell us, just as she has chosen not to let her blindness keep her from conducting prodigious research and intrepid experiments. Iyengar exponentially expands our understanding of the central role choice plays in the lives of animals and humans in a rapid-fire, many-faceted, and original inquiry that is at once personable and commanding. She explains our 'biological need for choice and control,' the decision process, and the myriad influences that dictate everything from purchasing choices to career moves, voting, medical decisions, and marriage. The daughter of Sikh immigrants from India, Iyengar is particularly astute in her globally significant analysis of the striking differences between how Americans and Asians make decisions. Much of this eye-opening anatomy of choice focuses on consumerism, a lively, revealing arena, but Iyengar's high-voltage curiosity and penetrating insights are far more valuable when applied to deeper matters of existence.

    Booklist

    Thoroughly enjoyed your thought-provoking presentation. The model you are advocating is simple yet powerful.

    NY Angels Member

    Sheena Iyengar was a big hit with the audience and really capped off our day of inspiring talks!

    St. Joseph's Health Centre Foundation

    We have heard so many rave reviews about your presentation at the IAPP Global Summit that it would be fair to say that the event was a huge success in great part due to your participation. So, thank you for working with us this year.

    International Association of Privacy Professionals

    Choice, perhaps the highest good in the American socioeconomic lexicon, is a very mixed blessing, according to this fascinating study of decision making and its discontents. Psychologist Iyengar cites evidence that a paucity of choice can damage the mental and physical health of dogs, rats, and British civil servants alike. But, she contends, choice can also mislead and burden us: advertising manipulates us through the illusion of choice; a surfeit of choices can paralyze decision making; and some choices, like the decision to withdraw life support from a loved one, are so terrible that we are happier if we delegate them to others. Iyengar draws on everything from the pensees of Albert Camus to The Matrix, but her focus is on the ingenious experiments that psychologists have concocted to explore the vagaries of choice. (In her own experiment, shoppers presented with an assortment of 24 jams were 1/10th as likely to buy some than those who were shown a mere six.) Iyengar writes in a lucid, catchy style, very much in the Malcolm Gladwell vein of pop psychology-cum-social commentary, but with more rigor. The result is a delightful, astonishing take on the pitfalls of making up one's mind.

    Publisher's Weekly

    Books

    Sheena Iyengar book

    The Art Of Choosing: The Decisions We Make Everyday of our Lives, What They Say About Us and How We Can Improve Them

    Every day we make choices. Coke or Pepsi? Save or spend? Stay or go? Whether mundane or life-altering, these choices define us and shape our lives. Sheena Iyengar asks the difficult questions about how and why we choose: Is the desire for choice innate or bound by culture? Why do we sometimes choose against our best interests? How much control do we really have over what we choose? Her award-winning research reveals that the answers are surprising and profound. In our world of shifting political and cultural forces, technological revolution, and interconnected commerce, our decisions have far-reaching consequences. Use this book as your companion and guide for the many challenges ahead. ‘No one asks better questions, or comes up with more intriguing answers’ Malcolm Gladwell, author of THE TIPPING POINT

    Read more..

    The Art Of Choosing: The Decisions We Make Everyday of our Lives, What They Say About Us and How We Can Improve Them

    Every day we make choices. Coke or Pepsi? Save or spend? Stay or go? Whether mundane or life-altering, these choices define us and shape our lives. Sheena Iyengar asks the difficult questions about how and why we choose: Is the desire for choice innate or bound by culture? Why do we sometimes choose against our best interests? How much control do we really have over what we choose? Her award-winning research reveals that the answers are surprising and profound. In our world of shifting political and cultural forces, technological revolution, and interconnected commerce, our decisions have far-reaching consequences. Use this book as your companion and guide for the many challenges ahead. 'No one asks better questions, or comes up with more intriguing answers' Malcolm Gladwell, author of THE TIPPING POINT
    Buy the book
    Buy the book
    Sheena Iyengar book

    Think Bigger: How to Innovate

    Gold Medal Winner, 2024 Axiom Business Book Award, Business Intelligence and Innovation In Think Bigger, Sheena Iyengar―an acclaimed author and expert in the science of choice―answers a timeless question with enormous implications for problems of all kinds across the world: “How can I get my best ideas?” Iyengar provides essential tools to spark creative thinking and help us make our most meaningful choices. She draws from recent advances in neuro- and cognitive sciences to give readers a set of practical steps for coming up with powerful new ideas. Think Bigger offers an innovative evidence-backed method for generating big ideas that Iyengar and her team of researchers developed and refined over the last decade. For anyone looking to innovate, the black box of creativity is a mystery no longer. Think Bigger upends the myth that big ideas are reserved for a select few. By using this method as a guide to creative thinking, anybody can produce revolutionary ideas.

    Read more..

    Think Bigger: How to Innovate

    Gold Medal Winner, 2024 Axiom Business Book Award, Business Intelligence and Innovation In Think Bigger, Sheena Iyengar―an acclaimed author and expert in the science of choice―answers a timeless question with enormous implications for problems of all kinds across the world: “How can I get my best ideas?” Iyengar provides essential tools to spark creative thinking and help us make our most meaningful choices. She draws from recent advances in neuro- and cognitive sciences to give readers a set of practical steps for coming up with powerful new ideas. Think Bigger offers an innovative evidence-backed method for generating big ideas that Iyengar and her team of researchers developed and refined over the last decade. For anyone looking to innovate, the black box of creativity is a mystery no longer. Think Bigger upends the myth that big ideas are reserved for a select few. By using this method as a guide to creative thinking, anybody can produce revolutionary ideas.
    Buy the book
    Buy the book

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