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Industry-level performance improvements can continue through replacement of technological designs even when learning within an existing design slows.
Astraholds
“TITLE: Progress can move between learning curves. BODY: Repeated production can improve a design, while invention and architectural change create a different design with a different performance frontier. Hidalgo uses successive transistor architectures and lighting technologies to explain why aggregate progress can exceed the ceiling of any single process. SCOPE: A historically illustrated mechanism, not guaranteed exponential progress or a prescribed learning rate. MEASUREMENT: Compare quality-adjusted service, not unlike devices; separate within-design learning, scale, R&D, and design replacement. COUNTERWEIGHT: Successor designs can fail or require rising research effort. ASTRA IMPLICATION: Model both terrestrial and orbital technology transitions; industry progress does not establish returns for a particular incumbent or entrant. Evidence here is the book's synthesis, not independently audited technology series.”
Connected claims3
- In the architectural-knowledge framework, adopting an innovation can require changing organizational interactions rather than merely replacing a component.
- Interruptions in production can erode organizational knowhow even when cumulative historical production remains unchanged.
- A cost decline associated with cumulative production growth does not by itself identify learning by doing as the cause.