Dr. Joel Shapiro | Kellogg School | What an NFL Injury Analysis Can Teach Business About Resilience

Dec 9, 2025

30:57

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A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Joel Shapiro, Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences Professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, formerly Varicent Chief Analytics Officer. Joel discusses his NFL study including why some teams handle injury better then others, the idea of finding variables which can't be seen by the naked eye, and his conclusion that resilience has a lot to do with planning, resource deployment and the foresight to think about potential problems. Key topics include: the importance of back-ups; the ability to find business problems that can be solved with data; and how to use data and AI to predict "bad stuff." Tune in to hear about the "percent cash wasted measure," and how Joel's class beat Las Vegas on predicting last year's NHL playoff teams.

**What NFL Injury Data Teaches Business About Resilience — with Joel Shapiro (Kellogg)**

Northwestern Kellogg’s Joel Shapiro returns to CMO Confidential to unpack a surprising finding: predicting player injury isn’t a “failed use case” — and the lessons translate directly to how leaders design resilient organizations. We cover the data model behind injury prediction, Joel’s “percent cash wasted” metric, the real effect of injuries on winning (including offense vs. defense), why backups matter, and how to build purposeful resilience across sales, supply chain, and leadership. Plus: a student project that beat Vegas and a fearless (and funny) Super Bowl take.

Chapters

00:00 Intro — Why this episode matters for executives

01:10 Joel’s remit: turning data & AI into business outcomes

03:19 Injury prediction isn’t a failed use case

05:45 Why the NFL: clean injury data and an 11-year dataset

07:32 What the model outputs: games likely to be missed

08:51 “Percent Cash Wasted”: paying for injured players

10:15 Do injuries really impact winning? The curve is flatter than you think

12:19 Offense vs. defense: wasted cash effects aren’t equal

13:47 Healthy one year, injured the next: who stays good?

14:36 The lever that breaks teams: losing a highly paid QB

15:25 Purposeful resilience vs. “toughing it out”

16:34 Backups matter — translating roster depth to business

18:29 If you can’t prevent every injury, recruit for availability

19:17 Business translation: resilience in sales, supply chain, and leadership

21:42 Treat resilience as strategy, not back-office insurance

24:22 Which companies are structurally resilient (and why scale helps)

24:49 Joel’s bold pick: the Bears’ weird start and a playful prediction

25:36 Data, betting, and integrity — what changes as information improves

27:25 Students vs. Vegas: NHL playoff models that won

28:20 How much data it really takes (rows, columns, and what matters)

29:54 Wrap and where to find more CMO Confidential