Our candidates have been chosen. We are proud to present our three nominates for the fifth GDBC Thesis Award.

"Hi, my name is Maaike ten Hoor, and I’m truly honored to be nominated for the GDBC Thesis Award in Digital Business. I’m currently close to finishing my medical degree, while also studying philosophy, law, and business administration. This may seem like a weird combination, but to me it makes sense: real-world problems rarely belong to a single discipline, and solutions often emerge when you dare to look across boundaries.

I’ve always believed that answers are often within reach, sometimes in another field, sometimes in another form, and that collaboration between perspectives is where innovation truly begins! Working as a researcher in oncological surgery at the UMCG, I kept encountering a paradox: we are designing increasingly advanced AI systems in healthcare, yet only a fraction ever reach actual clinical use. Philosophers often argue that 'explainability' is the main barrier of AI implementation in high-stakes environments, but what I observed in practice told a different story. We routinely use medical treatments whose mechanisms we don’t fully understand, so why demand a higher standard from AI?

This question became the starting point of my thesis, which challenges the assumption that transparency is the ultimate prerequisite for AI adoption. Instead, I argue that the main barriers are not technical but practical: they arise from trust, workflow fit, and the way organizations and clinicians relate to AI. In my thesis, I introduce two concepts - the threshold problem and the teleological gap - to show how medical AI is often evaluated through the wrong lens. I use these to outline a more collaborative, trust-oriented way of developing AI with clinicians.

These insights also highlight something essential for digital business: AI in high-stakes environments succeeds not by being more advanced, but by being designed in a way that fits real practice and earns trust. I’m grateful to share this work with the GDBC community, and I’m excited to explore how interdisciplinary thinking can help shape a digital future where AI is not only cutting-edge, but actually used. For me, this nomination isn’t an endpoint, but a chance to build bridges that make innovation possible!"