Customers and value proposition
Which customers should you prioritize, which needs justify your offering, and why would those customers choose you?
Product and Service Strategy
Which products and services should your company invest in to grow?
The roadmap keeps growing, sales brings in new requests, and every offering competes for the same people and budget. When it’s time to invest, which priorities can you defend with evidence?
George Eich Institute helps your leadership team decide which customers to prioritize, which offerings to strengthen, and where to commit resources. We apply Need-Based Decision Science to connect relevant customer needs with the value your company can create and capture.
Decisions your company can make
Portfolio and growth
Which products, services, and offerings deserve more investment? Where should you expand, test something new, or stop investing?
Roadmap and budget
What should you build, validate, or defer this cycle? Which initiatives could you drop to free up capacity?
We start with the decision you need to make. From there, your team develops a direction grounded in evidence, with priorities, explicit trade-offs, and next steps.
How relevant customer needs inform investment decisions
Need-Based Decision Science is the Institute’s methodology for using evidence about customer needs in strategy and investment decisions. We examine which customers have a need, how well customers feel it is currently met using ICAN, how much value addressing it could create for customers, and how much of that value the company could capture. The Need-Based Value Matrix helps structure these choices.
Consider a software company choosing between a feature requested by a handful of customers and an implementation service that addresses a recurring difficulty among its priority customers. The research helps the team compare the relevance of the needs, what it can deliver, and the revenue opportunity before committing resources.
Read about the methodology · Explore the Need-Based Value Matrix
How the work happens
Strategic context
We define the decision, examine your current strategy, and identify constraints and market signals that could change your direction.
Needs and opportunities
This stage includes the Strategic Prioritization Study. We organize available evidence, identify gaps, and decide where to investigate further with customers or other sources, depending on the decision and scope.
Strategy development
We compare options for your ideal customer profile, value proposition, differentiation, positioning, value creation and capture, and roadmap, according to scope.
Investment horizons and priorities
We decide where to sustain the core business, expand, or test innovations. At each horizon, we also consider what to stop funding or doing.
Management, impact, and growth
We turn choices into next steps, assign owners, and define measures to see whether decisions had the intended effect.
Evidence and applications
In The Need Gap 2026, we mapped 1,423 needs across 59 FocusMaps. 80.32% were selected by fewer than 30% of customers in their respective customer bases. Knowing which customers have a need helps determine how much weight it should carry in your strategy. Read The Need Gap 2026
- EVOUS. The case reports 245% growth in annual recurring revenue. In a new project, EVOUS sold a new solution to existing customers in eight countries in 60 days.
- PSA. According to PSA, an innovation committee offering launched for existing customers accounted for roughly 10% of revenue in under three months.
Choose how to develop your strategy
Cohort
- Who it’s for
- Founders and leaders who want to build their company’s strategy with guidance and exchange perspectives with other companies.
- How it works
- The Institute guides you through applying the method during the sessions. Your team works on its own business, uses the evidence available, and gathers missing evidence with guidance.
- What you leave with
- A direction for your business, with choices and priorities for the next cycle.
Dedicated project
- Who it’s for
- Leadership teams that want dedicated support to investigate and make decisions about their company’s offerings, segments, or investments.
- How it works
- The Institute conducts the agreed research, develops strategic options, and works with leadership on recommendations and portfolio choices.
- What you leave with
- An evidence-based recommendation with alternatives, priorities, trade-offs, and next steps.
Which decisions need a closer look?
Which decisions are clear to your team? Where do you need better evidence about customers, offerings, or priorities?
Discuss these decisionsFrequently asked questions
Is the Strategic Prioritization Study part of both formats?
Yes. It structures the research into needs and opportunities. The depth and sources depend on the decision, the available evidence, and the format.
Can we start with a specific decision?
Yes. We can start with a portfolio, value proposition, roadmap, or investment decision and cover the areas needed to support it.
Does this strategy work for service businesses?
Yes. The work applies to product, service, and hybrid businesses. For a service business, it can guide choices about customer segments, how to structure offerings, and where to expand.
What decision does your company need to make now?
Share your contact details so we can discuss the decision and which format fits your company.
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