ABSTRACT
Product management is about organizational outcomes. In most organizations there are one or more products or outcomes that are mission critical to the business. žese products could be considered a portfolio similar to a ™nancial portfolio of stocks, bonds, and cash. A ™nancial portfolio is a blend of stocks, bonds, and cash depending on the risk appetite of the individual. Aggressive ™nancial portfolios may have more stocks, whereas conservative ™nancial portfolios may have more bonds. Product portfolios need a mix of products to help achieve a good return on investment to shareholders. že Boston Consulting Group developed a matrix model for product life-cycle marketing that can be extended to portfolio management. že matrix model had four quadrants, each representing di«erent types of products that an organization may have. že products are assessed on two criteria: market growth rate (growth rate will require a higher investment in the product to compete) and relative market share (market share indicates the size of the organization’s share in the market and assumes growth of earnings will be faster if the share is bigger). že quadrants are
• Stars: high market growth and high market share • Cash Cows: low market growth and high market share • Dogs: low market growth and low market share • Problem Children: high market growth and low market share Although this mostly applies to for-pro™t organizations and typi-
cally for larger corporations, it still has some applicability to thinking about your product portfolio. Even for not-for-pro™t or government institutions, there is some mixture of products and some driving forces that dictate the mixture of products or outcomes. For government, it is the citizen who votes for di«erent products, such as health care, environmental concerns, oil prices, military spending, roads, infrastructure, and laws. Not-for-pro™t organizations have constituents
who shape the products that they support. No matter what organization, there will be a portfolio of products to manage and there are certain considerations that must be made.
