Lexicon

The Frame

Functional Coordinates

The coordinate system that locates any business, job, product, or resource by what it functionally does and where it sits in the order of work — the third reference frame alongside geographic and temporal coordinates.

Every economic classification system in general use answers one question: what industry is this business in? NAICS, SIC, ISIC, NACE, GICS, ICB, TRBC, and RBICS all differ in granularity and governance, and all of them are answering that same question. None answers the different question: what does this business functionally do, and where does that fall in the order of work?

Industry is a category label. Function is a coordinate. Space has latitude and longitude. Time has date and hour. Economic activity has had no equivalent — no address that survives a change of language, border, technology, or century. Functional Coordinates supply that third frame. Every term in this lexicon is a component of it.

Coined terms — Functional Coordinates

The governing frame. Original concepts developed and introduced by Rory Riggs.

Functional Coordinates — The coordinate system that locates any economic activity or resource by the function it performs and its position in the order of work, parallel to latitude and longitude in space and date and hour in time. Since 2014 — Patented.

Functional Coordinate System — The formal coordinate framework used to analyze economic information by functional position rather than by industry category. Since 2014 — Patented.

Functional Location — The position an economic element occupies in functional space, determined by what it does rather than where or when it operates. Since 2014 — Patented.

Functional Address — The three-part identifier of any economic part: what the job does, what it produces, and where it sits in the functional order of work. Since 2026.

The Functional Triad — The three-coordinate reference frame of time, space, and function, in which function supplies the what that time and space cannot. Since 2026.

Economic Cartography — The practice of charting an economic system by its functional coordinates so that the whole can be seen, compared, and managed. Since 2026.

The Locus Model

The framework beneath the frame — how functional coordinates are constructed.

Locus Model — The framework that sets out how any product-producing system is built and how it runs, giving every activity and resource a functional identity and an ordered position. Since 2013.

Locus Theory — The comprehensive systems theory of all activities and resources used in an economy, stated in two branches: the Locus Theory of Economic Systems and the Locus Theory of People. Since 2019.

Theory of Economic Systems — The generalized systems theory of all activities and resources used in an economy, from which the Locus Model is built. Since 2019.

Locus — The base unit of economic activity: a single pairing of an activity with the resources required to produce its output. Since 2013.

Economic System — The abstracted representation of any product-producing economic agent, applicable without modification to a business, a government, an organization, a department, or an individual. Since 2013.

Work Locus — The sentence structure describing the function of an Economic System. Since 2013.

Resource Locus — The sentence structure describing a resource performing a specific function. Since 2013.

Job Locus — The locus recording the work group in which a labor resource is deployed. Since 2019.

Enterprise Locus — The locus occupying the enterprise level of the Enterprise Barcode. Since 2019.

Locus Language — The formal language of the model, in which activities function as verbs, resources as nouns, and a locus is a complete sentence describing real economic phenomena. Since 2019.

AP Work Locus Activities / RP Work Locus Activities — The two classes of activity available to a work locus, distinguishing activity-product from resource-product orientation. Since 2019.

RP Verbs — The naming convention governing resource-product activities in the Standardized Activity Cycle. Since 2019.

Systems Economics — The field designation for the study of economies as living systems built from repeating, ordered functional activities and the resources that staff them. Since 2019.

Economic Physiology — Activity Architecture

The processes an economic system performs.

Economic Physiology — The activity dimension of the model: the branch of systems economics dealing with the actions a system performs to produce its product. Since 2019.

Activity Cycle — The full ordered sequence of actions a system performs in producing a product, dividing into four phases, twelve divisions, and thirty-six sub-divisions. Since 2013.

Product Sequence — The first half of the Activity Cycle, in which resources are acquired and converted into a product. Since 2013.

Money Sequence — The second half of the Activity Cycle, in which the product is exchanged and the proceeds are directed into the next cycle. Since 2013.

Phase — The four-part granularity of the Activity Cycle. Since 2013.

Division — The twelve-part granularity of the Activity Cycle. Since 2013.

Central Department Cycle — The Activity Cycle of the system responsible for producing that system’s own product. Since 2019.

Supporting Cycles — The cycles producing the resources a Central Department Cycle consumes; two types, seven conventional instances. Since 2019.

Subject Resource Production Cycle — A supporting cycle oriented toward producing the subject resources the central cycle deploys. Since 2019.

Input Resource Production Cycle — A supporting cycle oriented toward producing the inputs the central cycle acts upon. Since 2019.

Work Group — An Economic System operating at any level within an economic agent, typically below the department. Since 2019.

Work Group Cycle — The Activity Cycle of a single Work Group; a Central Department Cycle is defined by a cluster of them. Since 2019.

Department — A Work Group situated at the Central Department Cycle of an Economic System. Since 2019.

Reoriented Activity Cycle — An Activity Cycle defined relative to a specific product, with production fixed at position 2.2.2. Since 2013.

Standardized Activity Cycle — An Activity Cycle defined relative to the economy as a whole, producing fixed definitions for cross-entity classification. Since 2019.

Order Relationship — Activities falling near one another in the cycle share properties through sequential flow. Since 2019.

Subdivision Relationship — Divisions descending from a common phase resemble one another by descent. Since 2019.

Complementary Relationship — Activities positioned diametrically across the cycle share properties through matched relative position. Since 2019.

Modifier Relationship — Pre-, central-, and post- positions imply shared characteristics and comparable skill requirements. Since 2019.

Activity Product — A product that fulfills an activity within another system’s Activity Cycle. Since 2019.

Economic Morphology — Resource Architecture

The parts an economic system is built from.

Economic Morphology — The resource dimension of the model: the branch of systems economics dealing with the form and structures of Economic Systems and the relationships between them. Since 2019.

Subject Resource — A final resource, ready for use, contributing a specific functional role to production. Since 2013.

Subject Resource Role — The specific functional contribution a subject resource makes in converting inputs to outputs. There are five. Since 2013.

Space-Infrastructure Role — The role filled by space resources: supplying the location, environment, and structure in which activity occurs. Since 2019.

Operator Role — The role filled by people and equipment: transforming inputs into outputs by applying power and direction. Since 2019.

Direction Role — The role filled by information: carrying both the instruction to act and the specification of how, when, and where. Since 2019.

Financial Capacity Role — The role filled by money: funding the other resources. Since 2019.

Power Role — The role filled by energy: energizing the operator to perform. Since 2019.

Structural Resources — Resources used by performing a task directly; physically persistent, ready without transformation. People, space, equipment. Since 2019.

Supporting Resources — Resources consumed in enabling a structural resource to perform. Information, money, energy. Since 2019.

Constituent Resource — A resource requiring further refinement, incorporation, or combination before use. Since 2013.

Final Resource — A finished resource requiring no further modification, ready to serve as a subject resource. Since 2013.

Resource Category — One of the six functional groupings into which every resource resolves. Since 2013.

Stage — The four-level granularity marking a resource’s proximity to readiness for use. Since 2019.

Substage — The sub-level granularity refining distinctions inside a stage. Since 2019.

Combination Resource — A resource whose constituent parts belong to more than one category. Since 2019.

Cross-Category Resource — A resource that changes category as a consequence of incorporation into another. Since 2019.

Distinguishing Resource — The syntactic category recognizing that a subject resource can be what separates different methods of performing the same activity. Since 2019.

Resource Product — A product eventually used as a subject resource by another system. Since 2019.

Diversified (Div) — The notation representing a range of admissible values for an activity or resource. Since 2019.

The Barcode Architecture

How functional coordinates are recorded.

Barcode — An ordered arrangement of loci recording and communicating the functional position of an economic entity. Since 2013.

Enterprise Barcode — The twenty-locus barcode capturing a company’s product line and every Economic System connected to it. Since 2013.

Labor Barcode — The four-field barcode capturing a job’s functional role in the economy. Since 2013.

Summary Barcode — The Enterprise Barcode covering at least forty percent of a company’s revenue, standing for its principal economic function. Since 2019.

Barcode Level — A horizontal cross-section of a barcode; each describes a different class of economic entity. Since 2019.

Barcode Section — A vertical cross-section of the Enterprise Barcode; each characterizes a different economic agent. Since 2019.

Barcode Field — The intersection of a section and a level, containing a locus and any markers. Since 2019.

Barcode Marker — An identifying tag adding interpretive information to a locus within a field. Since 2019.

Constituent Resource Locus (CRL) — The locus describing the function of a constituent resource, typically paired with a Final Resource Locus. Since 2013.

Final Resource Locus (FRL) — The locus describing the final resource into which a constituent resource is incorporated. Since 2013.

Internal Operations Loci — The Enterprise Barcode fields describing how the enterprise’s product is consumed inside the customer’s own system. Since 2019.

Product Tier — The grouping of a CRL, an FRL, and a Work Group Locus describing one instance of product usage. Since 2019.

Product Line — A revenue-producing product of a firm, used strictly with reference to the Enterprise Barcode. Since 2019.

Product Lining — The process of dividing a company’s revenue into functionally distinct barcodes. Since 2019.

Auxiliary Product Line — A product line not represented by the firm’s Summary Barcode. Since 2019.

Jumping — The coding practice of leaving an FRL blank while its paired CRL is filled. Since 2019.

Department Locus — The barcode level identifying the department-level Work Group where the product is ultimately used. Since 2019.

The Marker Set — The nine markers qualifying loci within a barcode: Terminal Case · Customer Type · Customer Relationship · Product Type · Product Line · Process · Intermediary Type · Relationship Type · Temporal Coordinate. Since 2019.

Terminal Case Marker (TCM) — The marker recording what a Work Group acts upon, and the test for whether that Work Group is the last in the chain. Since 2019.

Economic Agents and Relationships

How functional positions connect.

Enterprise — The economic agent whose product line is the subject of a given Enterprise Barcode. Since 2013.

Customer — The economic agent consuming the enterprise’s product as part of its own operations. Since 2013.

Customer of Customer — The economic agent consuming the customer’s product as part of its own operations. Since 2013.

Co-Customer — An economic agent using the enterprise’s product jointly with the customer. Since 2019.

Parallel Customer — The co-customer situation in which both parties hold the same contractual relationship to the enterprise. Since 2019.

Primary/Secondary Customer — The co-customer situation in which only one party holds a contractual relationship. Since 2019.

Intermediary — The economic agent acting on the enterprise’s product before the customer receives it. Since 2013.

Agent Intermediary — The intermediary supplying a networking function without taking possession. Since 2019.

Payer Intermediary — The intermediary subsidizing or paying the enterprise, enabling customer access. Since 2019.

With Inventory Intermediary — The intermediary taking inventory of the product and reselling it. Since 2019.

Terminality — The property determining where a chain of product usage stops, fixed at the customer’s Central Department Cycle. Since 2019.

Functional Information Systems

The applied layer — functional coordinates in operating systems.

Functional Information System (FIS) — A system that augments economic and financial data with standardized functional references, making business, employment, product, and service data unified, searchable, and stable across time and geography. Since 2014 — Patented.

Functional Space — The n-dimensional space in which functional locations are computed and compared. Since 2014 — Patented.

FIS Coordinates — The applied coordinate values assigned to each business, job, and product in a functional information system. Since 2017.

Locus Functional Markers — The coded functional references derived from the Production System Model and assigned to entities in the FIS database. Since 2017.

Production System Model — The model identifying the parts and processes necessary to produce a product, comprising the activities and the resources of production. Since 2017.

Functional Query — The retrieval method in which entities are found by functional coordinate rather than by keyword or code. Since 2017.

Multi-Attribute Classification — The classification approach in which an entity carries several simultaneous functional attributes rather than one exclusive industry code. Since 2017.

Unified FIS Coordinate-Based Representation — The single coordinate frame into which classification systems such as ISIC, HS, EBOPS, and ISCO are resolved. Since 2017.

Functional Trajectory — The computed path an element traces through functional locations over time. Since 2017 — Patented.

Functional Proximity — The measured distance between two functional locations, enabling comparison across otherwise unrelated entities. Since 2014 — Patented.

Systems Syntax — The logical data model on which a representation of a functional system is constructed. Since 2017 — Patented.

Virtual Economics

Vocabulary introduced in the forthcoming book Virtual Economics: A Portrait of an Economic System by Rory Riggs.

Natural Functional Order — The stable, invariant sequence of positions every ongoing economic system must fill, independent of geography, culture, technology, or era. Since 2026.

Bounded Order / Unbounded Fill — The paired principle that the functional order is fixed while the actors, technologies, and outputs occupying it vary without limit. Since 2026.

Functional Twins — The accurate functional representations mirroring real-world resources and activities inside the model. Since 2026.

Economic Twin — The functional counterpart to the spatial twin supplied by GIS and the temporal twin supplied by the calendar. Since 2026.

Activity Axis — The coordinate axis ordering each recurring economic activity and assigning it a position within the cycle. Since 2026.

Resource Axis — The coordinate axis ordering resources by functional role, category, and stage of readiness. Since 2026.

Used extensively

Established terminology applied and contextualized throughout this work. No first-creator claim attaches to any term below.

General systems and living systems: General Systems Theory · Living Systems · Homeostasis · Open and Closed Systems · Emergence.

Semantic web and information architecture: Semantic Web · Ontology · Knowledge Graph · Semantic Network · Node · Edge · Digital Twin · Logical Data Model · Top-Down Classification · Bottom-Up Classification · Machine-Readable Data.

Linguistics and semiotics: Lexicon · Syntax · Semantics · Semiotics · Signifier and Signified · Object-Oriented Activity.

Coordinate and reference systems: Geographic Information System (GIS) · Latitude and Longitude · Temporal Coordinates · N-Dimensional Space · Cartography · Reference Frame.

Economic classification standards: NAICS · SIC · NACE · ISIC · SCIAN · SOC · ISCO · HS · EBOPS · GICS · ICB · TRBC · Sector · Industry · Sub-Industry.

Classical and institutional economics: Land, Labor, and Capital · Factors of Production · Circuits of Production · Division of Labor · Supply Chain · Value Chain · Gross Domestic Product · Balance of Trade · Economic Complexity.

Full definitions

Alphabetical. Each entry below is documented in depth — see also the linked terms for the surrounding structure.

Activity Cycle

The full ordered sequence of actions an Economic System performs in producing a product, and the master construct of the Locus Model. Every system must procure inputs, produce its product, exchange it, and manage the proceeds in anticipation of repeating the cycle. Those four phases divide into twelve divisions using a pre-, central-, and post- framework, and the subdivision repeats to thirty-six. Because the proceeds of one cycle fund the procurement that begins the next, the cycle is self-initiating — which is what qualifies an economy as a living system rather than a set of transactions.

See also: Product Sequence · Money Sequence · Phase · Division · Reoriented Activity Cycle

Barcode

An ordered arrangement of loci that records and communicates the functional position of an economic entity. Where a single locus states one functional fact, a barcode states an entire functional situation: the entity, what it produces, who consumes it, and how it is consumed downstream. The name is deliberate — like a retail barcode, it is a compact machine-readable identifier that resolves to a complete description.

See also: Enterprise Barcode · Labor Barcode · Summary Barcode · Locus

Economic Cartography

The practice of charting an economic system by its functional coordinates so that the whole can be seen, compared, and managed. It is the deliberate parallel to geographic and temporal charting: maps made space addressable, calendars made time addressable, and functional coordinates make economic position addressable.

See also: Functional Coordinates · The Functional Triad · Economic Twin

Economic Morphology

The resource dimension of the Locus Model — the branch of systems economics dealing with the form and structure of Economic Systems, the relationships between those structures, and the supporting elements that enable economic activity. Where physiology asks what a system does, morphology asks what it is made of. The analogy to biology is explicit and load-bearing: an economy has an anatomy.

See also: Economic Physiology · Resource Category · Structural Resources · Supporting Resources

Economic Physiology

The activity dimension of the Locus Model — the branch of systems economics dealing with the actions a system performs to produce its product. Every system, at the broadest level, procures, produces, exchanges, and manages. Those four activities strung in sequence constitute the Activity Cycle.

See also: Economic Morphology · Activity Cycle

Economic System

The abstracted representation of a generalized, product-producing economic agent — applicable without modification to a business, a government, an organization, a department, or an individual. Scale-invariance is the point: the same construct describes a multinational and a single job, which is what allows systems to nest inside systems and the model to run recursively.

See also: Work Group · Enterprise · Activity Cycle

Enterprise Barcode

The twenty-locus barcode capturing a company’s functional role in the economy, describing one product line together with every Economic System connected to it. It is organized into sections — Enterprise, Intermediary, Customer, Co-Customer, Customer of Customer — crossed by levels running from agent down to constituent resource. It is the model’s principal commercial artifact.

See also: Barcode · Labor Barcode · Summary Barcode · Internal Operations Loci

Functional Address

The three-part identifier of any economic part: what the job does, what it produces, and where it sits in the functional order of work. Once every part has an address, every part can be mirrored by a digital counterpart, and the whole can be assembled into a graph of the economy.

See also: Locus · Functional Coordinates · Economic Twin

Functional Coordinates

The coordinate system that locates any economic activity or resource by the function it performs and its position in the order of work. The construct is deliberately parallel to latitude and longitude in physical space and to date and hour in time: it supplies the missing third reference frame, answering what where the other two answer where and when. Every data entity in a functional information system is tagged with functional coordinates, so that function can be used as an index — to relate attributes across entities and to measure functional proximity, exactly as geographic coordinates do for spatial data.

See also: The Functional Triad · Functional Location · Functional Information System · Locus

Functional Information System (FIS)

A system that augments economic and financial data with standardized functional references, rendering business, employment, product, and service data unified, searchable, and stable across time and geography. FIS is to economic data what GIS is to geographic data: an indexing layer that makes an otherwise incomparable body of records comparable along a single dimension.

See also: Functional Coordinates · FIS Coordinates · Functional Query · Functional Space

Functional Location

The position an economic element occupies in functional space, determined by what it does rather than where or when it operates. Functional locations are computed rather than assigned, which is what distinguishes them from industry codes: two analysts following the same rules arrive at the same location.

See also: Functional Coordinates · Functional Space · Functional Proximity

Functional Proximity

The measured distance between two functional locations. Because function is expressed as a coordinate rather than a label, entities in unrelated industries can be compared directly — the measure that a category-based taxonomy cannot produce at all.

See also: Functional Location · Functional Space · Functional Query

Functional Query

The retrieval method in which entities are found by functional coordinate rather than by keyword or code. A keyword search of a conventional classification returns only entries whose labels happen to contain the search term; a functional query returns the complete population occupying the specified functional position, whatever those entities call themselves.

See also: Functional Information System · Locus Functional Markers

Functional Space

The n-dimensional space in which functional locations are computed, compared, and traversed. Representing the economy as a space rather than a hierarchy is what permits proximity, trajectory, and composition to be calculated at all.

See also: Functional Location · Functional Proximity · Functional Trajectory

Functional Trajectory

The computed path an element traces through functional locations over time. Because functional coordinates are stable across eras, a trajectory is comparable over decades in a way that an industry-code history is not — reclassification does not corrupt the series.

See also: Functional Space · Functional Location

Locus

The base unit of economic activity: a single pairing of an activity with the resources required to produce its output. Because the object of the activity determines which resources are needed and in what roles, a locus encodes a specific functional orientation toward a particular output — which is what fixes its position in economic space. Loci link to one another through the flows of products and services, and that linked, self-sustaining system of transformations is the living-systems structure the model describes.

See also: Work Locus · Resource Locus · Functional Address · Barcode

Locus Language

The formal language of the model, in which activities function as verbs, resources as nouns, and a locus is a complete sentence describing real economic phenomena. The language has a lexicon of valid words, a syntax governing how they combine into work loci and resource loci, and a semantics derived from position in the model. Treating economic description as a language rather than a code list is what makes the classification generative: new economic situations are expressible without amending the standard.

See also: Locus · Systems Syntax · Work Locus · Resource Locus

Locus Model

The framework that sets out how any system that makes a product is built and how it runs. It gives every job, business, industry, and sector an identity drawn from what it does and where it sits, and gives every product and resource an identity on the same terms. The claim is not that the economy changes but that the picture of it does: categories emerge bottom-up from the functional structure of the parts, by rule, rather than being drawn top-down before anyone looks.

See also: Locus Theory · Systems Economics · Functional Coordinates · Activity Cycle

Locus Theory

The comprehensive systems theory of all activities and resources used in an economy, from which the Locus Model is built. It is stated in two branches — the Locus Theory of Economic Systems, covering firms and their cycles, and the Locus Theory of People, covering individuals and laborers.

See also: Theory of Economic Systems · Locus Model · Systems Economics

Natural Functional Order

The stable, invariant sequence of positions every ongoing economic system must fill, independent of geography, culture, technology, or era. Transport sits between procurement and storage the way noon sits between dawn and dusk: the order is a property of the activity, not of the setting. That invariance is what supplies a coordinate system with axes along which economic activity can be compared across centuries.

See also: Bounded Order / Unbounded Fill · Standardized Activity Cycle · Functional Coordinates

Product Lining

The process of dividing a company’s revenue into functionally distinct barcodes. Because a firm’s revenue rarely maps to a single functional position, product lining determines how many barcodes a company requires and which of them becomes its Summary Barcode.

See also: Product Line · Summary Barcode · Auxiliary Product Line

Subject Resource Role

The specific functional contribution a subject resource makes in producing a product, specifying how several resources interact to convert inputs into outputs. There are five: space-infrastructure, operator, direction, financial capacity, and power. The roles are what make the resource taxonomy functional rather than descriptive — a resource is classified by what it does in production, not by what it is.

See also: Space-Infrastructure Role · Operator Role · Direction Role · Financial Capacity Role · Power Role

Supporting Cycles

The cycles producing the resources a Central Department Cycle consumes, as against the central cycle producing the system’s own product. There are two kinds — Subject Resource Production Cycles and Input Resource Production Cycles — and by convention seven instances, one for each resource category plus one for inputs. Each supporting cycle is an Economic System in its own right, with its own central cycle and its own seven supporting cycles beneath it.

See also: Central Department Cycle · Work Group Cycle · Subject Resource Production Cycle

Systems Economics

The field designation for the study of economies as living systems built from repeating, ordered functional activities and the resources that staff them. It names the discipline; the Locus Model is the framework within it and Functional Coordinates the instrument it produces.

See also: Locus Model · Locus Theory · Economic Physiology · Economic Morphology

Systems Syntax

The logical data model on which a representation of a functional system is constructed. It is the machine-side counterpart to the Locus Language: where the language governs how a human states an economic sentence, the systems syntax governs how a database holds one.

See also: Locus Language · Functional Information System

Terminality

The property determining where a chain of product usage stops. A product can be traced from the enterprise through intermediaries, customers, and customers of customers, but the trace must terminate somewhere; terminality fixes that point at the customer’s Central Department Cycle. It is the construct that keeps the model’s recursive structure finite and computable.

See also: Terminal Case Marker · Central Department Cycle · Internal Operations Loci

The Functional Triad

The three-coordinate reference frame of time, space, and function. Time orders a system’s history, space locates its physical parts, and function defines the roles that keep it running. The first two are charted so completely that we no longer notice we are doing it; the third has never been charted at all. Supplying it is the purpose of the work.

See also: Functional Coordinates · Economic Cartography · Economic Twin

Work Locus

The sentence structure in the Locus Language describing the function of an Economic System. It is the activity-side counterpart to the Resource Locus, and together the two form the model’s complete descriptive grammar.

See also: Resource Locus · Locus · Locus Language

Key concepts

Term	Usage	Year	Sources	Description
Functional Coordinates	Coined by Rory Riggs	2014	US 9,910,910 · US 10,019,509	The coordinate system locating economic activity by function, parallel to space and time coordinates
Functional Coordinate System	Coined by Rory Riggs	2014	US 9,910,910 · US 10,019,509	The formal framework for analyzing economic information by functional position
Functional Information System	Coined by Rory Riggs	2014	US 8,990,268 · US 9,098,564 · US 9,361,358	System augmenting economic data with standardized functional references
Functional Location	Coined by Rory Riggs	2014	US 11,657,026 · US 12,242,431	Position in n-dimensional functional space determined by what an element does
Functional Space	Coined by Rory Riggs	2014	US 12,242,431	The n-dimensional space in which functional locations are computed
Functional Trajectory	Coined by Rory Riggs	2017	Locus LP patent family	The computed path an element traces through functional locations over time
Systems Syntax	Coined by Rory Riggs	2017	Locus LP patent family	The logical data model underlying a functional system representation
Locus Model	Coined by Rory Riggs	2013	Locus Rulebook 1st ed.; Systems Economics 2019	Framework defining the parts and processes of product-producing systems
Locus Theory	Coined by Rory Riggs	2019	Systems Economics, Preface	Systems theory of all activities and resources used in an economy
Locus	Coined by Rory Riggs	2013	Systems Economics, Ch. 5	Base unit pairing an activity with the resources required to produce its output
Locus Language	Coined by Rory Riggs	2019	Systems Economics, Ch. 2	Formal language in which activities are verbs, resources are nouns, a locus a sentence
Systems Economics	Coined by Rory Riggs	2019	Systems Economics, Locus Analytics, 3rd ed.	The field designation for economies studied as living systems
Economic Physiology	Coined by Rory Riggs	2019	Systems Economics, Ch. 1	The activity dimension — what a system does
Economic Morphology	Coined by Rory Riggs	2019	Systems Economics, Ch. 1	The resource dimension — what a system is made of
Activity Cycle	Coined by Rory Riggs	2013	Systems Economics, Ch. 3	Full ordered sequence of actions a system performs to produce a product
Enterprise Barcode	Coined by Rory Riggs	2013	Systems Economics, Ch. 8	Twenty-locus record of a company’s functional role and full chain of product usage
Labor Barcode	Coined by Rory Riggs	2019	Systems Economics, Ch. 8	Four-field record of a job’s functional role in the economy
Terminality	Coined by Rory Riggs	2019	Systems Economics, Ch. 11	The rule fixing where a chain of product usage stops
Subject Resource Role	Coined by Rory Riggs	2019	Systems Economics, Ch. 4	The five functional contributions a subject resource can make
The Functional Triad	Coined by Rory Riggs	2026	Virtual Economics, Ch. 7	Time, space, and function as the reference frame for economic systems
Functional Address	Coined by Rory Riggs	2026	Virtual Economics, Preface	What a job does, what it produces, where it sits in the order of work
Natural Functional Order	Coined by Rory Riggs	2026	Virtual Economics, Ch. 2	The invariant sequence of positions every economic system must fill
Spaceship Earth	Used extensively	1965–69	Boulding; Ward; Fuller	Earth as a bounded, provisioned vessel — no first-creator claim
General Systems Theory	Used extensively	1968	von Bertalanffy; Boulding; Miller	All systems share a common functional order — no first-creator claim
Knowledge Graph	Used extensively	2012	Google; IBM	Network of entities and relationships — no first-creator claim

Source: Justia patent index. Full definitions and additional terms available on request.