Compare methods

	Strategic Value Chain Analysis	BCG Growth-Share Matrix
Field	Strategic Management	Strategic Management
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1985	1977
Originator	Michael E. Porter	Bruce D. Henderson (Boston Consulting Group); Barry Hedley
Type	Activity-decomposition pipeline for competitive advantage	Portfolio-classification pipeline for resource allocation
Seminal source	Porter, M. E. (1985). Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. Free Press, New York. ISBN: 9780029250907	Hedley, B. (1977). Strategy and the 'Business Portfolio'. Long Range Planning, 10(1), 9-15.
Aliases	Porter Value Chain Analysis, Value Chain Framework, Activity-Based Competitive Advantage Analysis, Value System Analysis	Boston Box, Growth-Share Matrix, Boston Consulting Group Matrix, Product Portfolio Matrix
Related	4	4
Summary	Strategic value chain analysis disaggregates a firm into the discrete activities through which it designs, produces, markets, delivers, and supports its product, in order to locate the sources of cost advantage and differentiation that underlie competitive advantage. The framework is Michael Porter's, introduced in his 1985 Competitive Advantage, where he divides the firm's activities into five primary categories — inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service — and four support categories — firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, and procurement — with margin as the difference between total value created and total cost. Porter argued that competitive advantage cannot be understood by looking at the firm as a whole but must be traced to the way particular activities are performed and linked. The analysis extends outward to the value system linking suppliers, the firm, channels, and buyers.	The BCG growth-share matrix is a portfolio-analysis tool that classifies a diversified company's business units on two axes — the growth rate of their market and their market share relative to the largest competitor — and uses that classification to guide cash allocation across the portfolio. Devised by Bruce Henderson at the Boston Consulting Group around 1970, it rests on two ideas BCG had developed: that cash generation rises with relative market share (via the experience curve) and that cash consumption rises with market growth. The familiar four-quadrant scheme — stars, cash cows, question marks (problem children), and dogs — was popularized and operationalized by Barry Hedley's 1977 Long Range Planning article, while Hax and Majluf's 1983 Interfaces paper subjected the matrix to critical analysis and refinement. It became the archetypal corporate portfolio framework of the 1970s and 1980s.