Sheena S. Iyengar
S. T. Lee Professor of Business
Management Division
BA, University of Pennsylvania, 1992; BS, University of Pennsylvania, 1992; PhD, Stanford, 1997
Joined CBS in 1998
Office:
322
Kravis
Phone:
212-854-8539
E-mail:
[email protected]
Fax:
212-854-3778
Curriculum Vitae
Biography
Sheena S. Iyengar is the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School, and a world expert on choice and decision-making. Her book The Art of Choosing received the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year 2010 award, and was ranked #3 on the Amazon.com Best Business and Investing Books of 2010. Her research is regularly cited in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist as well as in popular books, such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. Dr. Iyengar has also appeared on television, including the Today Show, the Daily Show, and Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN. Her TED Talks have collectively received almost four million views and her research continues to inform markets, businesses, and individuals around the world.
Growing up in New York City as a blind Indian American and the daughter of immigrants, Dr. Iyengar began to look at the choices she and others had, and how to get the most from choice. She first started researching choice as an undergrad at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where she graduated with a B.S. in Economics. She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Stanford University where her dissertation, “Choice and its Discontents,” received the Best Dissertation Award. Dr. Iyengar received the Presidential Early Career Award in 2002, and in 2011 and 2019, she was named a member of the Thinkers50, a global ranking of the top 50 management thinkers. She won the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Core Teaching from Columbia Business School in 2012 and was named one of the World’s Best B-School Professors by Poets and Quants. She has also given keynotes, and consulted for companies as wide ranging as Deloitte, Google, Bloomberg, Blizzard Entertainment, J.P. Morgan & Chase, and The North Face.
In a groundbreaking, new course called "Think Bigger," Dr. Iyengar created a six-step method for teaching people how to take advantage of lessons learned from neurological and cognitive science to put our minds to work when generating our best ideas. Her new book Think Bigger will be released in 2022. She also teaches another course, the Innovation Salon, a forum comprised of students, alumni, faculty, and Innovation Fellows which seeks to not only understand the issues facing industry today, but how to address those issues with innovation.
Teaching
Spring 2022
Think Bigger
(MBA)
Innovation Salon
(MBA)
Spring 2021
Think Bigger
(MBA)
Innovation Salon
(MBA)
Fall 2021
Spring 2020
Fall 2020
Think Bigger
(MBA)
Innovation Salon
(MBA)
Spring 2019
Think Bigger
(MBA)
Leadership & Organizational Change
(EMBA)
Summer 2019
Leadership & Organizational Change (EMBA Core)
(EMBA)
Spring 2018
Summer 2018
Leadership & Organizational Change (EMBA Core)
(EMBA)
Think Bigger
(EMBA)
Fall 2018
Columbia Caseworks cases
Competition in the Geo-Mosaic Industry
(2012)
Coauthor(s): Sheena Iyengar, Paul Ingram
In The Media
Your Email Marketing Is Destined to Fail without These 3 Essentials
Overthinking Your Money: Avoiding Analysis Paralysis
Sounds Strange, but There Could Be Too Many Vaccines
Retailers Cut Back on Choices; ‘We Don’t Need Three Types of Red’
You're Facing a Lot of Choices Amid the Pandemic. Cut Yourself Slack: It's Called Decision Fatigue.
Press Releases
Awards And Honors
MacArthur Foundation, January 2014
Columbia Business School, April 2013
Columbia University, August 2013
Columbia Business School, Poets and Quants, October 2012
Columbia Business School, September 2012
Journal of Consumer Research, September 2012
India Abroad, June 2011
Thinkers50, November 2011
Amazon.com, November 2010
Financial Times & Goldman Sachs, September 2010
Columbia Business School, Fall 2005
Executive Office of the President for Social Scientists, Office of Science and Technology Policy, January 2002
Society for Experimental Social Psychology, October 1998
ABAI 43rd Annual Convention.
Graduation keynote speaker, at Columbia Business School Global Center Asia.