In business what is a learning curve?

A common learning curve shows that the cumulative average time to complete a manual task which involves learning will decrease20% whenever volume doubles. This is referred to as an80% learning curve. Let's illustrate the80% learning curve with a person learning to design and code websites of similar size and complexity. If the first website takes100 hours, then after the second website the cumulative average time will be80 hours (80% of100 hours). The cumulative average of80 hours consists of100 hours for the first website plus only60 hours for the second website resulting in a total of160 hours divided by2 websites. After the fourth website the cumulative average time will be64 hours (80% of80 hours). After the eighth website the cumulative average will be51.2 hours (80% of64 hours). In other words, the total time to have completed all eight websites will be409.6 hours (8 websites times an average time of51.2 hours). Improvements in technology can mean time and cost reductions beyond those in the learning curve. For example, software may become available to assist in the design and coding, computer processing speeds might increase, there may be lower costs of processing and storage, etc. The learning curve is important for setting standards, estimating costs, and establishing selling prices.

It is a diagram that shows how the amount learned changes (hopefully increases) with time.