It's literally studied as "learning" in the management science literature.
For example: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2015.235...
> We find that productivity improves when multiple generations of the firm’s primary product family are produced concurrently, reflecting the firm’s ability to augment and transfer knowledge from older to newer product generations.
> until you have the full factory going you won't be able to fully estimate your actual numbers, much less come up with all the sequential small improvements that build on each other.
Why not? Is there a theory or school of management or industry that establishes this foundational principle that seems so commonly invoked? It feels true, but I don't really know why it might be true. There must also be great examples of counterpoints in this too!
Maybe it goes back to learn by doing: it's a common refrain in outdoor recreation that safety rules are written in blood; that many of our guidelines directly follow from bad things that happened. But certainly we can also design safety rules by thinking critically about our activities. Learn by doing vs theory.