In the innovation game, finding and engaging in a community of innovators where you can get your questions answered is important. Otherwise, you face your biggest innovation challenge alone.

This weeks show centered around the answers to the most common listener questions. These questions included:

* What is the biggest innovation challenge (mistakes) organizations face?

* How did the “7 Laws of Innovation” come about? (Link to poster)

* What was your biggest innovation success?

* What was your biggest innovation failure?

* What was your biggest innovation challenge?

* How did you get into doing the Killer Innovations podcast?

* What is your opinion of the decision for HP to split into two separate companies?

* Given that you worked with Carly, what is your opinion of her?

Direct link to Season 11 Episode 35

Killer Question:

Not that long ago, a passenger complaint letter to Virgin Atlantic circulated around the web. It was very long, fully illustrated with photos, clearly somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and very funny, but it made a few good points about the bad food and surly service this particular passenger had experienced. All these years later it still occasionally shows up as one of the most-read stories at telegraph.co.uk.

In 2009, another disgruntled passenger created a music video about how United baggage handlers had broken his $3,500 guitar. He uploaded the song to YouTube, and to date it has been viewed more than fifteen million times. United’s customer service department, which had originally denied him any kind of compensation, quickly changed their minds as the video went viral. They adjusted their tone from defensive to humorous and held a meeting with the passenger. Eventually the airline made a charitable donation to a jazz school in his name.

The problem is that none of their existing, former, or potential customers care that United eventually resolved the customer complaint. All they remember is that it took a funny song and nine million YouTube hits to get the airline to do the right thing.

The point is, it’s easier than ever to find out what your customers are thinking and saying about you these days. It’s also much easier for their opinions to go viral, so it’s imperative that you respond to your them with the same speed and immediacy they use to critique you. Social networking sites have fundamentally changed the nature of the customer complaint. Customer complaints are morphing from one-off exchanges between a customer and a service representative into ongoing conversations, often in real-time, visible to the public, and open to anyone who cares to comment. By monitoring these sites, you can hear what your customers are saying about you, without them even being aware that their opinions are being heard.

When I was still with HP, I found out about a notebook hinge problem through Twitter. How? I had HootSuite app up all the time, and I used it to search for any tweet related to HP. One day I was sitting in my office and a customer tweeted that he was having a problem with a hinge on his HP notebook. The complaint got my attention.

I put down what I was doing and went to respond to the tweet, but before I could even get my hands on the keyboard another customer replied, “It’s a known problem, HP has a repair protocol.