Abstract: [Purpose] Learning fuels individuals to fulfill sustainable development. Past experiences are important learning sources. Learning from different types of past experiences will have different impacts, and require different conditions. Starting from social problems and real phenomena, from a deep and fine-grained perspective, a learning matrix by both the dimension of "internal-external" and the dimension of "success-failure" is built, which results in four categories of individual learning from past experience, i.e., learning from internal successful experience (LISE), learning from internal failed experience (LIFE), learning from external successful experience (LESE) and learning from external failed experience (LEFE), with which we hope to help us analyze the learning effectiveness and related issues in systematical and comprehensive manners.[Approach] Based on huge quantity of observations of real phenomena and literature review, the aim of this work is to make two major theoretical contributions to the field of organizational learning.[Findings] On the one hand, in views of goals and consequences, "suggested practices" and "avoidant practices" for each learning category are extracted, and a "traffic lights" metaphor is utilized to illustrate the bi-benchmarks of "suggestions" and "avoidances". On the other hand, in order to enhance learning effectiveness and avoid the pitfalls, based on a comprehensive theoretical research and practices review, both the internal and external conditions for each learning category are elaborated, and it is identified that not only knowledge and experiences are needed, known as the "cognitive prerequisites", but also there should be affectivity and willingness, known as the "motivational prerequisites".[Value] With these contributions, this paper hopes to increase the effectiveness of learning from internal/external successful/failed experience, and to shed light upon the fine-grained research of organizational learning.

Key words: organizational learning, successful experience, failed experience, internal experience, external experience, suggested practice, avoidant practice, internal condition, external condition, cognitive prerequisite, motivational prerequisite