THE NEED GAP
2026
The challenge of prioritizing what truly matters to the customer.
What 1,423 needs reveal about the complexity of deciding where to generate and capture value.
8 out of every 10 mapped needs never turn out to be a priority for 30% of customers.
The study reveals that the challenge isn't finding needs, but distinguishing which ones carry enough relevance to guide decisions.
There is an abundance of needs and a scarcity of shared relevance.
Not opinion.
Real, measured prioritization.
A study conducted by the George Eich Institute itself with its own base, not a study commissioned by a specific company, on how needs identified directly with customers behave when subjected to a real prioritization exercise.
80.32%
of the analyzed needs never turn out to be a priority for 30% of the customer base.
These needs are real and emerged directly from listening to customers. Even so, most of them remain concentrated in smaller slices of the base. The strategic challenge begins when the company needs to distinguish which of these needs justify a broad decision, and which belong to specific groups.
Each dot represents 1% of the 1,423 needs analyzed. The rest, in gray, make up the 80.32% central finding.
45.33% of mapped needs don't show sufficient significance at the intersection of volume and service level to advance in the model's strategic classifications.
They may still be relevant to specific customers or groups. The data shows that the existence of a need, on its own, doesn't provide enough evidence to guide a strategic decision.
37.1% of the needs identified with customers received no selection at all when those same participants, alongside an expanded base, had to prioritize.
The customer themself can reveal a need they stop choosing once they have to decide what matters most.
Only 7.38% of needs are a priority for at least half the base.
Roughly 1 in every 14 needs. What looks like a priority for one group of customers is rarely a consensus for the rest.
The more shared relevance we require,
the fewer needs survive.
The 80% cutoff is reserved for interviews.
Only 1 in every 27 needs meets the conditions the model uses to guide positioning.
Finding a real need is far easier than finding a need capable of sustaining a relevant market position.
What to sustain,
what to create.
How many needs are, at the same time, broadly prioritized and well served by the company?
How many combine market relevance with a Need Gap large enough to justify innovation?
The complete data varies drastically as we raise the level of required consensus. Reserved for interviews.
The capacity to build
has grown. The capacity to prioritize hasn't.
Companies are increasing their capacity to build, test and automate. That makes the quality of prioritization even more important: every solution created makes the company more complex and more expensive to sustain. It isn't just about creating, it's about maintaining what was created, even when it's the wrong thing. The result is a low adoption rate for the solutions delivered.
Many needs are real. Few carry enough shared relevance to justify broad decisions.
The question stops being just "did the customer ask for it?" and becomes "for how many customers does this actually matter, and will we generate and capture more value?"
Accelerating execution doesn't solve the problem of selecting the right need.
"Building is getting easier. Knowing what deserves to be built is still hard."
The study analyzes 1,423 needs across 59 companies, drawn from 1,462 participants representing 1,309 client companies. Data was collected between the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2026.
The unit of analysis is a need in the context of a company. The 1,423 observations do not necessarily represent 1,423 semantically unique needs in the market.
Needs are initially identified in a qualitative stage with customers. Each company then selects a set for quantitative validation, an average of 25 needs. Participants from the qualitative stage return to take part again, and the base is expanded, with customers asked to indicate which needs are a priority at that moment. Participants are guided to focus their selection on roughly five priorities, though they may select more.
Priority is self-reported by the customer at the time of the survey, not inferred from usage behavior, revenue, or purchase decisions. The volume percentage represents the share of participants who prioritized each need. The service level, measured by ICAN, is evaluated only among those who selected it as a priority.
George Eich Institute. (2026). The Need Gap 2026: the challenge of prioritizing what truly matters to the customer. Available at georgeeich.com/en/the-need-gap-2026
One study,
many angles.
"8 out of every 10 mapped needs are neither a priority nor a consensus for 30% of customers, study shows."
"Finding the right problem may be the rarest and most complex part of the innovation process."
"AI accelerates the capacity to build, but data shows the complexity of deciding what deserves to be built."
"Only 1 in every 27 mapped needs shows positioning potential."
"Only 7.38% of needs turn out to be a priority for at least half of customers."
"Study reveals that analyzing ICPs by need is one path to boosting growth and solution adoption."
Exclusive data available
for your story.
The study contains additional breakdowns on innovation and leverage potential, Core Business, positioning, Need-Based ICP, B2B x B2C comparison, and implications for 2027 planning. George Eich is available to present the full data, methodology and unpublished breakdowns.
What is your company's Need Gap?
The study shows the aggregate behavior of 1,423 needs. The next step is finding out how the needs in your own base are distributed.
"Before deciding where to invest in 2027, find out where your base truly concentrates value."
Map my company's needs