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I've come across the word "learnings" twice recently -

  • Stripe - "Running an online business is a difficult endeavor. Stripe Elements let you take advantage of Stripe’s collective learnings in security and building/optimizing checkout experiences so that you can focus on your product."

  • Microsoft - "In this post, I will cover: [..] * Key Learnings"

It seems to me that the word "learnings" can be replaced with "knowledge" (in the first case) or "lessons" (in the second case) with a clearer meaning. Is there some additional nuance conveyed by the word "learnings"? Is there a situation where the "learnings" conveys intent better than the alternatives?

For example, this answer says:

My personal impression is that the modern use sounds like annoying business jargon or non-native speaker use, and I would not use it myself.

typesanitizer
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    I would agree with the quoted answer, and add that it adds the implication the the speaker "learned" new information that others may not have. knowledge or lessons may be widely available, but "learnings" might be only understood after the smart people ran tests and analyzed data. – katatahito Jul 02 '19 at 03:07
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    @katatahito I also find it unfamiliar, awkward and quite ugly but I do understand that there are differences between 'learnings', 'knowledge' and 'lessons'. 'Knowledge' implies that the information or has been available for a long while and might have been acquired from other people's writing and teaching. 'Lessons' implies either that the information or skill set was acquired from the teaching of others or through repeated failure. In the Stripe quote I read 'learnings' as referring to skills and information gained by experience, but less painfully. Personally I would use 'experience'. – BoldBen Jul 02 '19 at 04:11
  • I've come across learnings frequently - I fully agree with the quoted answer. For the first example - 'experience' seems more appropriate. In the second answer, I would suggest something like 'take aways' (which also teeters on jargon, but is a little less contrived in my opinion). – Balaz2ta Jul 02 '19 at 04:16
  • @Balaz2ta, could you write an answer? It seems like you already have one but in the comments :P. – typesanitizer Jul 02 '19 at 13:17
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    Why do you believe that the sentence you quote from First use of “learnings”? does not constitute a sufficient answer to this question? What else needs to be said about this word? – jsw29 Jul 02 '19 at 22:50

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Learnings - suggests a list of points, tips or 'hacks' that have been in acquired along the way, through experience. The reason why it's 'learnings' rather than learning, is because it's talking about this multiple series of points, so it's plural. A list of tips.

Knowledge - is a more general term which refers to the body of information that a person or an organisation holds. It might be comprised of learnings but it implies more of a synthesised and organised understanding.

Lessons - tends to include the 'before and after' description of what was experienced - meaning 'a. happened - and from it, I learned b.' The experiential event, as well as the experience gained. Really 'learnings' are the end result of the 'lessons'.

Lessons can also refer to 'what went wrong' - for example 'The hard disk just wasn't big enough so the information backed up and then the system crashed'. So we learned our lesson and next time we'll buy a bigger one'. And we say that was 'a lesson learned'-ie, experience.

And then 'the learning' would be what was distilled from that, as a point of wisdom for example:

'When rolling out systems make sure that the hard disk is big enough so that the system doesn't get full and crash.'

And 'learnings' would be a list of experiential points somewhat like that.

Learnings are sometimes referred to as 'take-aways' - meaning the distilled points of wisdom that you take home with you and intend to use again or put into practice.

https://ludwig.guru/s/learnings

Jelila
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