Idea 5 - Boston matrix The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix is the one of the greatest of management tools - brilliant, feted, poorly deployed and then discredited, but still illuminating in the right context. Otherwise known as the 'growth/share matrix' it is, according to one management writer, one of the 'two most powerful tools in the history of strategy'. Companies can use the Boston matrix to analyse their portfolio of businesses and then to decide what to do with them - spend money on building them up, simply keep them ticking over or dump them. Sometimes referred to as the BCG matrix, it was developed in the late I960s by Bruce Henderson of the Boston Consulting Group - hence its name. Henderson and his colleagues were also responsible for the other of those 'two most powerful tools'. The first step in using the matrix is to break the company down into strategic business units (SBUs). An SBU could be a subsidiary, a division, a product...