Hi, and welcome to my blog! My name is Jon Franqui, a 30-something product management professional who somehow found himself working in tech and pursuing an MBA after leaving college with an English literature degree and ambitions to be a journalist. To be fair to myself, I made a reasonable effort to become a journalist, but having assumed the role of struggling writer for a few years, I started dreaming of a steady paycheck and my own place.

A few years later, with a job in product management and with (some) money in hand, I started considering what I wanted from my future. Writing certainly didn’t pan out, so I figured I’d throw all my eggs into the corporate America basket (hence the decision to pursue an MBA). While I wouldn’t call this decision ill-advised, I should have realized that someone who enjoyed reading classic literature and creative writing wouldn’t find the standard fare of business classes terribly engaging. I’m too far into now to call it quits, but I have high hopes for this innovation class, which I have on good authority is nothing like other business courses.

Finally, I want to take a moment to explain the name of my blog. In college, I had a friend who always provided the well-intentioned but infuriating advice of trying to relax when I had writer’s block. His words, naturally, had the exact opposite effect and caused me to stress out even more. To this day, whenever I’m writing, confronting a novel problem, or just trying to be creative, he appears in my mind’s eye and calmly resites the three words I hate the most: try to relax. I figure that since this class will lean heavily into creative thinking and unstructured problems, he’ll be living rent-free in my head over the next few months.