Research by INSEAD faculty reveals how digital payment data holds surprising predictive power for lending decisions; why social ties matter to those engaged in platform gig work; and why the aggressive, win-at-all-costs cultures that many organisations assume drive excellence may be undermining it.

Also this month, recently published case studies offer an in-depth look into the dramatic bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery and how one company rewrote the rules of a declining industry using AI and Blue Ocean Strategy.

Cashless payments open doors to credit

Does how you pay your bills say something about how reliably you’ll repay a loan? According to research by Boris Vallée and his co-authors published in The Journal of Finance, the answer is “yes”. Borrowers who use cashless payments tend to gain better access to capital from FinTech lenders and are less likely to default.

The authors explain this through a signalling framework: Choosing cashless payment technology credibly signals that a borrower is less likely to divert cash flows. When combined with other data sources, such screening accuracy improves further. The synergy between cashless payments and credit assessment also helps explain why FinTech lending and the shift away from cash have risen in tandem, and provides a fresh rationale for open banking.

Read the full paper

The value of work friends in the gig economy

The gig economy is often portrayed as atomised and impersonal: workers competing independently through an algorithm, with little room for social dynamics. A new working paper by Devanshee Shukla, Victoria Sevcenko and Jasjit Singh challenges that picture. Analysing data from an on-demand delivery platform in India, they found that referred workers – those who joined through a connection with a more experienced colleague – earn 14.2% more per hour than comparable non-referred workers.

However, when the referring worker leaves the platform, referred workers’ earnings drop by 12.5%, erasing most of the advantage – the decline is sharpest for the more information-sensitive earnings components, where the referrer’s real-time guidance matters most. In markets where formal information channels are underdeveloped, interpersonal networks can be a critical substitute.

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The hidden cost of hyper-competitive cultures

High-pressure, hyper-competitive workplace cultures are often assumed to be a necessary condition for excellence. A working paper by Maria Guadalupe, Daisy Pollenne and Kaisa Snellman puts that assumption to the test in academia. Drawing on data from over 1,000 faculty and staff across five European business schools, they find that so-called masculinity contest culture – characterised by aggression, dominance and winner-takes-all competition – is consistently associated with lower well-being, higher turnover and no improvement in publication rates or citation impact.

The effect holds for both men and women, with no exception even for star performers. Women face an additional citation penalty, suggesting that these cultures may entrench gender disparities in how research is evaluated. The implication is uncomfortable for institutions that have built their identity around intensity.

Read the full paper

The battle for Warner Bros. Discovery

Few merger and acquisition episodes have been as dramatic, or as financially consequential, as the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery. Lily Fang uses this real-world example for a comprehensive financial analysis case study, taking readers through the full arc from AT&T’s ill-fated 2018 acquisition of Time Warner to Paramount Skydance’s eventual winning bid.

How did Warner Bros. Discovery – once celebrated as the entertainment colossus that would stand toe-to-toe with Disney – end up as a takeover target? And was Paramount Skydance’s US$31-per-share bid a masterstroke or a financially reckless gamble fuelled by CEO David Ellison’s ambition and political access?

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How one company turned a sunset industry into a Blue Ocean

The karaoke (KTV) industry in China had largely been written off – traditional operators faced heavy assets, declining footfall and a perception problem as newer entertainment competed for attention. A new case study by W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne and Mi Ji examines how Mei KTV’s founder chose a different path by creating new market space rather than fighting over existing demand.

The company broke with the asset-heavy model, developed a distinctive value proposition and deployed AI as a structural part of how it operated and expanded – not as an add-on, but as a core enabler of strategy. The result was rapid, profitable growth in a category others had abandoned, illustrating the central logic of Blue Ocean Strategy: the most powerful competitive move is often to stop competing and start creating.

Read the case study