In the late sixties and early seventies, while the Boston Consulting Group were devising the BCG or Growth Share matrix, General Electric, a leading corporation in the United States, were also looking at concepts and techniques for strategic planning. The firm was disappointed in the profits that they had made from their investments in the various businesses, which suggested flaws in GE’s approach to investment decision-making. They became interested in the Growth-Share matrix and liked the visual approach depicting the positioning of a firm’s businesses on the matrix. General Electric, from all their own strategic planning research, objected to the two dimensional matrix which relied on market growth for industry attractiveness and relative market share for business strength.
GE asked McKinsey and Company, a consulting company in the USA, to develop a portfolio approach with a wider dimension than the BCG matrix. In 1971 McKinsey and Co developed the business screen for General Electric to differentiate the potential for future profit in each of the 43 strategic business units. This matrix is also known as the industry attractiveness – business strength matrix and the nine-box matrix.