Experience curve...

A "experience curve" vale cada vez menos...

"“The experience curve is the means of measuring probable cost differentials,” BCG wrote in 1973. “A difference (i.e., a ratio) in market share of 2 to 1 should produce about 20 percent or more differential in pretax cost on value added.” In other words, if you command twice as much market share as your nearest competitor, your pretax cost of doing business ought to be 20 percent lower than that competitor’s. This model led, in turn, to another “powerful oversimplification” (Henderson’s term) from the offices of BCG: the “Growth-Share Matrix.”

...
If you make 1 million widgets out of the 100 million widgets produced every year, you have a 1 percent market share. If your largest competitor makes only 500,000 widgets, you have a relative market share of two times, and you should have a 20 percent cost advantage over that competitor.
Or you would have up until about 1978. In that year, BCG revised downward the power of the experience curve: from 20 percent to 10 percent. Presumably, this came as an unpleasant surprise to those CEOs who, in the previous decade, had been using the Growth-Share Matrix to make some of their most important decisions. But most likely, it did not come as a surprise to those managers of highly profitable companies who somehow managed to make big returns despite their relatively small market share."

Basta recordar o calçado e o destino dos super-eficientes...
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Agora vejamos isto:

"Claims that 3D printing (also known as digital printing) is poised to shake up the manufacturing industry in dramatic fashion have been on the rise. A September 2013 report from investment advisor the Motley Fool even went so far as to assert that the new technology will “close down 112,000 Chinese factories...and launch a 21st-century industrial revolution right here in the U.S.A.” As much as we would like to see manufacturing return to Western shores, we’re a bit less sanguine than the prognosticators. Indeed, before we send pink slips to millions of Chinese workers, we need to step back and analyze 3D printing through the lens of the experience curve, and how it both drives and responds to consumer adoption of new technologies. And before we predict widespread change to the manufacturing industry’s structure, we must reflect on how economies of scale and total landed cost drive investment decisions."

Os cemitérios estão cada vez mais repletos de empresas que confiaram demais na "experience curve"

"The argument for displacing Chinese workers stems from a questionable assumption that 3D printing eliminates the need to seek economies of scale."

Eheheh a lógica das economias de escala... como se tal explicasse o sucesso das vendas e preços do calçado, ou o retorno do têxtil, ou do mobiliário, ou da cerâmica, ou...

Primeiro trecho retirado de "Where value hides" de Stuart Jackson
Segundo trecho "A Skeptic’s Guide to 3D Printing"