Think Bigger: Mastering Strategic Choice Intelligence

Many AI offerings focus primarily on tools. This program begins with the quality of the leader’s thinking, then uses AI to make that thinking sharper, faster, and more rigorous through:

• Choice Mapping AI Platform: Use Professor Iyengar’s proprietary tool to move beyond unstructured brainstorming, uncover relevant strategic patterns, and compare a broader range of potential solutions.
• Voice-Activated Innovation Tool: A real-time capture system runs throughout the four days. Participants record, refine, and iterate on ideas continuously, while faculty gain visibility into each participant’s evolving thinking—enabling more targeted coaching and richer feedback.
• Vibe Coding & Rapid Prototyping: Participants use AI to build working prototypes and minimum viable tests in hours rather than weeks. This is not a coding class—it’s a methodology for using AI to validate ideas before committing organizational resources, significantly reducing the time and resources required for early experimentation.
• Live Executive Sponsor Engagement: On the final day, each participant’s executive sponsor joins via videoconference to hear their transformation pitch and provide real-time feedback. This bridges the gap between the classroom and the boardroom, accelerating post-program implementation.

Think Bigger is a six-step methodology for generating innovative solutions to complex challenges. Rather than beginning with open-ended brainstorming, participants define the problem, examine how others have solved its component parts, and combine those insights into novel, practical choices. Hear about this proprietary method from the faculty director, below:

Build Better Choices with Choice Mapping – Your AI-Enhanced Innovation Partner

Choice Intelligence is the ability to frame complex challenges, generate stronger alternatives, evaluate trade-offs, and make more deliberate decisions.

Choice Mapping helps leaders put that capability into practice. Developed by Sheena Iyengar, this AI-powered tool guides participants through a structured process that expands their consideration set and surfaces relevant strategies from across industries, organizations, and historical contexts.

Using a 5x5 grid of curated approaches, participants can compare possibilities, strengthen ideas, and identify the most promising path forward. Integrated into Think Bigger: Mastering Strategic Choice Intelligence, Choice Mapping offers a disciplined approach to problem-solving, with access continuing for a limited time after the program.

The Think Bigger methodology is grounded in behavioral decision science and draws on Sheena Iyengar’s two decades of research on how people make choices. Her work, published in The Art of Choosing and Think Bigger, has been taught to MBA students and C-suite executives at Columbia Business School for over a decade. 

The six-step method applies insights from modern neuroscience and cognitive psychology to the practice of innovation—replacing intuition-driven brainstorming with a structured, evidence-based approach. By integrating AI as a choice partner—not a replacement for human judgment—the program helps leaders broaden their options, test their assumptions, and evaluate potential paths more systematically. The result is a repeatable way of working that combines computational pattern recognition with informed executive judgment.

Explore the core methodology:

By the end of the program, you will have applied the full Think Bigger methodology to a strategic challenge from your organization. You will leave with:

• A breakthrough solution to a real strategic challenge your organization faces, developed through the full six-step Think Bigger methodology and refined with AI-powered analysis
• A board-ready transformation pitch deck that has been pressure-tested by peers, refined by faculty, and presented to your executive sponsor for real-time feedback
• A structured impact game plan with stakeholder mapping, influence strategy, and financial framing for gaining leadership buy-in and translating your solution into organizational action
• A repeatable decision-making framework that you and your team can apply to any strategic challenge—with or without AI—grounded in two decades of behavioral science research
• Continued access to Choice Mapping, Professor Iyengar’s AI-powered strategic tool, for a defined period following the program
• A global peer network of senior leaders from diverse sectors, industries, and geographies who share a common methodology for tackling complex problems

Think Bigger: Mastering Strategic Choice Intelligence is designed for senior leaders responsible for strategic decisions who want a structured method for making better ones. Typical participants include:

• C-suite and senior executives seeking a disciplined approach to innovation and strategic decision-making, whether or not they consider themselves “AI-fluent”
• VPs of Strategy, Business Development, and Product who need to generate and evaluate high-impact solutions under uncertainty
• Functional leaders across marketing, operations, finance, and technology who are responsible for embedding innovation within their organizations
• High-potential leaders identified as future C-suite executives who need to develop strategic thinking capabilities that distinguish transformative leaders

No technical AI background is required. The program meets you where you are and builds from strategic fundamentals.

Learn more about the faculty directors whose expertise in choice, decision-making, innovation, and AI shapes the program’s practical approach to stronger strategic decisions.

All certificate images are for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change at the discretion of Columbia Business School Executive Education.