Robert Bosch as a manga hero

Germany's Bosch company scored a cross-cultural coup by telling the story of the company's founder to employees in Japan in a series of action-packed mangas. Bosch was one of Germany's first multinationals, and today it has 350 subsidiaries in 60 countries across the globe.The mangas have received numerous awards for their effectiveness in communications.

Seven-year-old Robert Bosch, the second-youngest of 12 children, learns on the family farm in Albeck, Germany that people, plants and animals are part of the same family, and that all creatures are interconnected.

Helping out with one of the children’s homework in politics, Robert's father Servatius Bosch tells Robert and others that justice is when everyone is considered equally important. The father then tells them they are leaving the farm and inn moving to the city of Ulm.

Servatius tells 15-year old Robert that the world is in motion, one invention follows another, and that nothing is progressing faster than technology. He suggests Robert find a career in precision mechanics, because that’s where the future is.

After his apprenticeship Robert works in New York for inventor Thomas Edison. But the 25-year-old is fired after a year of hard work. He is impressed with Edison’s business acumen but bitterly disappointed at the unfair way workers are treated. He returns to start his own company in Stuttgart.

At Bosch’s start-up, foreman Arnold Zähinger builds a new ignition magneto that uses electric sparks, not an open flame, to ignite automobile engines. Earlier electric ignition devices only worked on heavy, stationary engines used in factories. They were too slow and cumberson for automobiles.

In expansion mode, Bosch builds a high-tech factory out of reinforced concrete to save costs and time. It is the first factory in Stuttgart to be made of the material. The method also creates larger spaces for workers that are better ventilated and have more light than conventional brick factories.

Businessman Emil Jellinek in Nice, France, orders a revolutionary car design from Daimler, with a Bosch ignition system. Jellinek names the car "Mercedes" after his daughter, and it wins the Nice to La Turbi car race by a long stretch. The Daimler and Bosch technology becomes a gold standard in the young automotive industry.