Business is always a little bit like traveling through uncharted lands: you go forward hoping to find gold, but there are traps, competitors, and unpredictable twists and turns to avoid getting lost, you need tools to help you understand where to invest and what to leave behind. One of these tools is the BCG matrix, created by specialists from the Boston Consulting Group in the last century. It’s not just another theory for managers in strict suits, but a very practical thing that allows you to look at your products or projects and decide what to do with them. Imagine that you have a few ideas: one is already making money, the other is just promising, and the third is actually hanging around, and the matrix helps to put it all together and not waste time on something that is not worth the effort.
The idea of the matrix came from a time when business was a little bit simpler than it is now: markets were growing predictably, competition was less global, and companies could sit on one successful product for years, but even then, executives had to figure out where to go next. The Boston Consulting Group offered a simple way to take two key metrics — how fast the market is growing and how much of it your product occupies — and divide it into four groups, and you get a kind of map where you see what you have in your hand: a treasure, a liability, or something in between. And although the world has changed a lot since the 1970s, this model is still alive because the essence of business has remained the same — finding what works and getting rid of what pulls down.
The first group to talk about is the stars. The name sounds beautiful, and for good reason: these are your best products, the ones that are sold in a booming market and occupy a significant share there. Think of a new gadget — say, the wireless headphones that everyone buys now. The market is growing, you’re a leader, money is flowing. But there’s a caveat: the stars require attention and investment in order not to lose ground. It’s like a bright light bulb: it shines for everyone, but if you don’t change the batteries, it will go out quickly. Companies love their stars because they show things are going uphill, but keeping them up is a job.
And then there’s «cash cows,» and it’s not as romantic, but it’s very understandable. It’s products that have found their niche in a market that’s not growing fast, but they’re making a steady income. Think of a classic product like laundry detergent: people buy it for years, the market doesn’t change much, and you’re in the lead. These cows don’t cost much, they just have to be supported, and they have to put their profits into something new. It’s like an old, reliable friend: it doesn’t surprise, but it always helps. In business, these foods are the foundation of peace of mind because you know they will feed you even in difficult times.
Then we have dogs. It’s no good: it’s products with a small market share that either stays there or dies. For example, you make floppy disks in the era of cloud storage — the demand is almost zero, the competition has bypassed you, and you only lose money. Dogs often become ballast: they waste resources, and there’s little use. It’s like an old chair in the house: it creaks, it takes up space, and it’s better to be thrown away. Although sometimes these products are kept for the sake of some narrow audience or just sentimentality, it’s rare.
And finally, question marks. This is the most interesting and risky part of the matrix. Here are products that work in a growing market, but have not yet taken a prominent place in it. Suppose you launched a new brand of eco-friendly cosmetics: the green market is growing, but few people know you yet. Such signs are like a lottery ticket: you invest money and effort, you can grow a star, but you will not succeed, you will become a dog. This is the most difficult category, because it requires courage and sense. You kind of stand at a crossroads: take a risk or wait for everyone to clear up.
How do you use it in real life?
Now, let’s imagine that you run a small company that sells food: pizza, salads and desserts. You take the BCG matrix and you start watching. Pizza is a cash cow: the food delivery market is not growing as it used to be, but you’re the leader in your neighborhood, and people are ordering steadily. Salads are a question mark: the health food market is going up, but you’re just starting out, and there are plenty of competitors. And desserts are the dog: demand for sweets is falling because everyone is on diets, and you’re in the outsiders. Pizza money can be used to promote salads, and desserts can be either closed or redesigned to new trends — say, make them sugar-free — and that’s how the matrix helps you not just look at numbers, but make decisions.
The BCG matrix is good for its simplicity. You don’t have to be an economics expert or drag a mountain of data behind you — you just have to figure out how the market is growing and how strong you are there. It’s like playing cards: you put them on the table and you see which ones you keep and which ones you dump. Of course, in order for everything to work, you need to know a little bit about your business: if you misjudge the market, the conclusions will be crooked. But even a rough sketch is better than complete blindness. Imagine that you hold a loss-making project just because it is dear to you, even though it has become a dog long ago. The matrix makes you look at it soberly and not waste your energy in vain.
By the way, the matrix is often used in conjunction with other tools, such as SWOT analysis, where you look at your strengths and weaknesses and your opportunities and your threats. «Stars» and «cows» are your strengths, «dogs» are your weaknesses, and «question marks» are opportunities that may not be justified, or PEST analysis, which takes into account external factors like politics or technology. If you have sugar laws in your country, your desserts will definitely become «dogs.» These approaches are part of the same puzzle: everyone adds something different, and together they help you see more.
But back to the matrix itself. It’s not just about business, it’s also about common sense. Even in life, you can apply this logic: your habits or hobbies can also be squared, something that brings joy and perspective is a star, something that just supports you, a cow, and something that wastes time is a dog, and it shows how universal the idea of BCG is: it works where you need to allocate resources, whether it’s money, time or energy.
Today, in 2025, the world is more complex than when the matrix was created. Markets are changing at lightning speed: what was a star yesterday can become a dog tomorrow. Technologies like artificial intelligence or big data add precision: you can quickly calculate market growth or your share without relying on guesswork. Take the application market: they used to be question marks, then they became stars for companies like TikTok, and now some are moving to cows because growth has slowed.
What do we do next?
Let’s say you’ve figured out your products. You’ve got a star, a new project that’s tearing up the market. Great, but you have to invest so it doesn’t go out. There’s a cow, an old product that makes money. You can milk it, but don’t forget to support it. The dog pulls back, either close it or try to revive it if you have ideas. And the question mark is your bet or you can bet. The main thing is to act. The matrix doesn’t just draw a picture, it tells you where to cut, where to add, where to risk.
Of course, the matrix has its drawbacks. It doesn’t take everything into account: customers’ emotions, random events, internal problems of the company. And it simplifies the reality a little bit: not every product clearly falls into one square, sometimes it’s somewhere on the edge. But that’s also its power — it doesn’t burden you, it gives you the basis for thinking. It’s like an old lantern: it won’t light up the whole forest, but will show you a path. And if you add a little bit of intuition and modern tools, you can not just go ahead, but find real treasures in this complicated and exciting world of business.
