Awards of this kind tend to go to people who pursue one particular innovation (using a particular technology in the classroom, for instance) in a way that is easy to explain and visualise. Ragnvald Sannes has persistently done innovation in teaching and course development for his whole career at BI:

• He was the first to use web technology in the classroom, in 1995, setting up course pages and interacting with students over email and FAQs, in the process inspiring other faculty to start their own initiatives.
• He has created a model for process-based EMM courses, where the students form groups through an innovation market, getting coaching through real-world projects that deliver real business value. The main redesign for this was with the course Strategisk Forretningsutvikling og Innovasjon 14 years ago, and the course has since then been oversubscribed. Out of the student projects have come new companies, major reorganisations and technology innovations. The approach has been copied for other courses, such as Analytics for Strategic Management, with business results conservatively estimated to more than NOK 100m.
• He has built up a collaborative relationship with a number of technology companies in Norway, resulting in many initiatives that benefit students, such as competitions, excursions to companies in Norway and abroad.
• He has consistently experimented with and developed technologies for use in the classroom and in courses – for instance, he spearheaded the use of webinars as a supplement to and replacement for lectures in EMM courses, as a way of delivering content to students. This included getting and testing technology which has become the standard at BI, long before the organisation started doing this in any systematic manner.
• He has developed a number of courses (and now a bachelor program) aiming at teaching students not only about technology, but helping them implement it in context. For instance, his course Den digitale endringsagenten have students implementing chatbots and RPA (robotic process automation) while in the course, not just making the course relevant to the students but making them eminently employable as well.
• He has patiently and persistently been a faculty representative and expert on committees and projects associated with the use of technology in the classroom since he started at BI 25 years ago – the latest being the initiative with Skills Norway to develop flexible solutions for executive education within digital competencies.

The pedagogical innovation BI needs is not showy use of single technologies, but relentless evolution of teaching, content and technology over long periods of time. Ragnvald exemplifies how this should be done – hence, he deserves this award.