There's a proven way to drive down defense acquisition costs, and it works especially well for the complex, high-tech platforms prone to big cost overruns. You've heard of it: the learning curve.

This Learning Curve effect is often overlooked, ... With “move to the cloud” becoming a business imperative, most users have acquired the basic understanding of cloud economics.

The next stage of a startup, the sales learning curve ... (5-10 people) who are closing business and hitting their quotas is where you start to see the unit economics of sales and marketing.

[4] Production economics and the learning curve: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Production Economics (2015). Back to "Production and Operations Management" ...