BCG Matrix
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Here’s a BCG Matrix for scientific papers. One paper is plotted on the graph. At Nature’s Action Potential blog, the editor explains why they accepted it. This is an interesting step towards greater transparency. Where do other papers you like lie on this graph?
(Hat tip to JT)
I like the idea but I’m not sure I agree with how the axes (and thus the categories) were assigned. Based on the wikipedia link provided, my intuition would be to assign “question age” to the market growth axis since old questions are more likely to already be settled than new ones, and “technique age” to the market share axis since with a newer technique fewer people will have employed it. This would rotate the matrix counter clockwise. It would also correctly assign the “old techniques/old questions” quadrant to the “dogs/pets” category and make the Cohen study a “cash cow”. Also I think this correctly identifies new questions answered with new techniques as “stars” and new questions answered with old techniques as question marks….
Thanks for those thoughts. Very good points.
Here are reasons why I set it up that way.
The x-axis is “Market Share” in the original BCG matrix. I think old questions have a large audience, and thus a large market share. New questions often have relatively small audiences. The y-axis was “Market Growth”, and I think old techniques have a relatively small potential for growth while new techniques may have a very large potential for growth (e.g., RNAi in the 90s, optogenetics more recently).
“Cash cows” are products that are old, but profitable. The ones that pull the business along although they may be a bit boring. “New technique” and “cash cow” seems incongruous to me, so I didn’t want those to overlap.
Papers that address a new question using a new technique are often difficult to get through the review process at high profile journals because people aren’t sure what to think of them. There isn’t a clear story that they fit into. That’s why I set it up so that those items would be in the “Question mark” quadrant.
I figured that Nature papers could show up anywhere, but tend towards the “Star” quadrant. I’m sure they could show up in “Cash cow”, as you suggest.
I think of “Dogs/Pets” as papers going off on a tangent from the rest of the field. If no one follows, then there isn’t much payoff. Just “breaking even”.
I like putting research into this context… it is a nice reminder that there is no single “good science”. If I was an institution that housed researchers or provided grants to researchers (*cough* NIH *cough*), such a breakout would be useful to ensuring a balanced research portfolio that was forward-looking while managing risk inherent in the top right corner.