Harvard Professor Uses Manga To Teach Students About Steve Jobs

A manga about the partnership and subsequent falling out between Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak is a big hit. At Harvard Business School, at least.

And this isn't Caleb Melby's The Zen of Steve Jobs or the Japanese manga titled Steve Jobs, either. This is a 32-page graphic novel titled Apple's Core that was developed specifically to offer students a cautionary tale about how business relationships can go bad.

The comic is currently in use in Professor Noam Wasserman's class, and his students seem to be eating it up. Wasserman didn't have the idea for the comic, though.

That distinction falls to Professor Thomas Alexander, who came up with the idea when he was teaching a business class in the Philippines. Many of his students weren't native English speakers, so Alexander decided to offer them something more visual. He wrote a comic script, hired an artist, and taught his students with it. Afterward, it eventually caught Wasserman's attention.

Apple's Core is available digitally on Harvard Business Review's website (students bought all 20 print copies Wasserman made), but be warned: It's got a college textbook price. For 32 pages, it's $7.

[Via The Wall Street Journal]