It is time to upgrade the “Cows and Dogs” matrix many of us learned in business school, where “cows” are products of the past and “dogs” are offerings that may not be worth keeping.
In the Age of AI, leaders need a more hopeful, dynamic way to look at their portfolios. Instead of treating categories as fixed labels, we can use them as starting points for asking where each offering might go next.
In this updated view, we still use a two-by-two grid, but we map offerings along two axes: time and margins.
On one axis, we ask: Does this offering generate meaningful revenue today, and is it likely to generate meaningful revenue in the future?
On the other axis, we ask:
Does the economics work—does the value delivered justify the cost and effort to deliver it, in a way that is strong, repeatable, and efficient enough to sustain healthy margins?
Once you look at your portfolio this way, four patterns begin to emerge:
Stars with high margins and strong growth potential over time
Ruminants as formerly glorious offerings
Strays as heavily invested products that did not quite take off
Elitist Solutions that are a good idea but currently expensive and overly niche to command strong margins
Stars
Stars sit in the upper-right: high margins now, strong potential for the future. These offerings have traction, relevance, and momentum. Customers value them. Teams know how to deliver them. They feel like the center of gravity in the business.
But even Stars are not guaranteed. Markets shift. Expectations change. Technology (including AI) opens new possibilities and raises new standards. The question is not just, “How do we protect our Stars?” It is, “How do we help them shine even brighter?”
A Star may be brighter for longer if:
New use cases are discovered and intentionally supported, so the offering solves more than the original problem without losing its core.
New segments are identified and served with thoughtful variants or bundles, extending relevance beyond the initial ideal customer.
Adjacent markets are explored where the same underlying capabilities create distinctive value, turning a single Star into a small constellation of related offerings.
The roadmap keeps weaving learning from these new use cases and segments back into the core, so the Star grows in depth, not just in surface area.
The goal is not to freeze Stars in place; it is to keep them luminous as the environment changes.
Ruminants
Ruminants are your former Stars: the offerings that once generated strong revenue and may still do so, but whose best growth days are probably behind them. They “chew” on established relationships, familiar markets, and a known way of doing things.
On the grid, Ruminants inhabit the high-margin past, with a less certain future. They have earned their place. They may still be funding new initiatives. But the world around them has shifted.
Ask yourself questions about YOUR Ruminants, including:
Are there adjacent use cases or segments where the existing capabilities would be genuinely valuable without major rework?
Could the core be repositioned for a clearer problem, a more specific customer, or a better-defined job to be done?
Which parts of the product still feel essential and differentiated, and which have become clutter, legacy, or “me too” features?
Is there a dignified next chapter for this offering, or has its strategic role already been fully played?
Some Ruminants can become Stars again through reinvention. Others can be pared back into more focused offerings or spun out as distinct products for specific niches, while some serve best by funding what comes next.
Strays
Strays are offerings that have consumed time, attention, and resources, but have never really earned their keep—and will not, if nothing fundamental changes. They may have been launched for the wrong reasons, aimed at the wrong customer, funded at the wrong time, or built on an unsustainable cost structure. They may have simply wandered away from your true strategy or execution challenges led to under-performing results.
Strays deserve honesty and compassion. The key questions are:
Does this offering address a problem that still truly matters, or has the need shifted elsewhere?
Is there a more specific customer, segment, or use case where the product would clearly fit and win?
If so, what would it take to simplify, refocus, or rename the offering so its purpose is unmistakable?
Are there core capabilities that could be folded into another product instead of standing alone?
If we choose not to evolve it, what strategic space, budget, and attention would be freed up by a kind, intentional sunset?
Sometimes the most strategic action is to let a Stray go. Other times, the work is to narrow its purpose, reposition it for a specific customer or use case, fold its best capabilities into a stronger product, or rename and reshape it so it finally has a clear place in the portfolio.
Elitists
Elitists are bleeding‑edge, high‑touch, expensive‑to‑deliver offerings that serve a narrow, sophisticated audience. They can feel glamorous and genuinely transformative for a handful of clients—but in their current form, they don’t serve enough people, or they can’t serve them efficiently enough to create healthy margins.
The risk with Elitists is that they stay elitist—niche, exclusive, and un‑scalable. The opportunity is to use that intense, early signal to design clearer products, sharper features, and more scalable delivery models, so you can expand the audience and improve margins over time.
The key questions for Elitists are:
What makes this offering uniquely powerful for the small group that loves it today?
Which aspects of that power must we preserve, and which complexities could we simplify or automate without losing the magic?
How might we prototype a simpler, more self‑serve version that keeps the signature value but works for many more customers?
If we get that right, what are the next circles of customers or markets we can responsibly expand into?
In other words: can we turn an Elitist into tomorrow’s Star?
Moving everything up and to the right
The point of this framework is not to sort offerings into good and bad boxes. It is to ask: How could each of these move up and to the right?
A Star can be made brighter and stay relevant longer by expanding into new use cases, segments, and adjacent markets while keeping its core clear.
A Ruminant can be given a thoughtful next chapter—repositioned, refocused, or spun into a more sharply defined offering—or gently retired so it can fund what comes next.
A Stray can be intentionally reshaped for a specific problem and customer, merged into a stronger product, or released to free up strategic space and attention.
An Elitist can be reimagined so its underlying insight becomes more accessible and scalable, evolving from a high‑touch niche into tomorrow’s Star with broader reach and healthier margins.
With these thoughts in mind, FountainBlue designed a Stars, Ruminants, Strays, and Elitists app to help users map their portfolio, sit with what they see, and then ask broader, more hopeful questions about what’s next for their business. The aim is to help users choose the path that moves each offering up and to the right—toward clearer products, broader reach where it makes sense, margins that compound over time, and people who are better supported to make those shifts wisely.
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