What items gathered during the recruitment process can I share with others? We require approval from several parties before making an employment offer, and I am concerned that we may be sharing confidential information when “check complete” should be enough. 

You’ve been there. You’re on a deadline with limited information, and what you’ve got to draw from is a similar episode that transpired eight months ago, or eight years ago or with an entirely different company. But hey, there are some parallels. This time sounds like that time (sort of), so you base your present reaction on your past experience. The process is called reasoning by analogy, and while it can be a powerful method in the decision making process, it can also be problematic and limiting.

Kish Rajan is the director of GO-Biz, the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. Previously, he was the director of North American sales for SanDisk, was an aid to Phil Angelides during his ’94 run for state treasurer and was a legislative aide to California Sen. Barbara Boxer.

About 70 percent of my team are introverts, and all of them were here when I came on board as a manager. They won’t come together to solve problems. In fact, one of my employees told me, “I like to figure things out on my own.” It’s like each one of them lives on an island, and it’s too hard to take their boat over to collaborate. Any advice?

Kris Barkley, the Design Director at Dreyfuss & Blackford Architects and president of the American Institute for Architects Central Valley, sat down with Comstock’s Editor in Chief Christine Calvin to talk about digital fabrication, biomimicry, the industry landscape for up-and-coming architects and, of course, next months’s Experience Architecture Week. 

Thomas Edison is most often credited with inventing a thing, the light bulb. But if you really take a look at what Edison did, you’ll see he was able to envision not only the technology, but also how people would use it and why they would benefit from its use. What he actually created was a product with a fully realized marketplace. Edison’s approach was an early example of a concept that has since been dubbed “design thinking” — a creative manner of problem-solving that places the user at the center of the experience.

I work at a small, privately owned company of 15 people. I am third in the chain of command. My direct boss has just put in his notice, and now I am in the odd position of having to hire myself a new boss. How do I make sure that the boss is the right fit?

I’m an accountant for a small start up in Sacramento — not an HR manager. But, as often happens, HR issues tend to fall on someone, and that someone is me. The current team has been here since the beginning; we started the place. But now we need to hire someone. A stranger. How do I start?

More than any other, this issue might give many people the impression that Comstock’s is staffed by dozens of graphic artists, illustrators and web developers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Though, given the magnitude of the magazine’s redesign and the timeline under which we’re transforming comstocksmag.com, I can understand the misconception.

Patent infringement lawsuits have long been the business version of a first world problem — a thorny matter for the Googles and Samsungs of the world. But in recent years, so-called patent trolls, shell companies that exist only to sue other companies for allegedly violating patents the shell company owns, have been going after much smaller businesses, from coffee shops to real estate offices.