Scales

Do re mi fa so la ti do!

Ahem.

The term also refers to the way companies grow. If a company sells a widget for a buck and that widget costs them 85 cents if they make a million them a year, and it only drops to costing them 80 cents if they make a billion of them a year, then that company "does not scale."

The opposite would be a software company which might cost $30 per unit for the first million units but might drop to $2 a unit on the next hundred million; if the retail price stays around 50 bucks, that's a lotta mega profit.