Here’s an object lesson in the value of letting go.

A hacker recently used his disassembler to hack and fix a long loading time issue in Rockstar Games’ flagship game, Grand Theft Auto.

How did Rockstar react? Did they feel threatened, get defensive and and pursue legal action against the hacker for copywrite infringement? No. Instead, they thanked the hacker and paid them $10,000.

Now you might not want a customer to break into your store at night and rearrange the merchandise so that it is easier for customers to access resulting in increased sales. But what of the customer who points out a problem with your product or service and offers constructive criticism in a Google review? Are you going to ignore it? Get defensive? Or engage in a dialogue aimed at building the relationship and extracting whatever value you might get from that exchange?

The choice is yours to make, and the strength (and perhaps the growth) of you brand depends upon how you react.