Stratified Weight methodology and fund-to-ETF conversion
Gene editing and the future of agricultural biotechnology
Stratified weighting and functional classification in index construction
ETF TV News #66 — Converting Funds to ETFs
No. Riggs is listed as an inventor on all 20, but only 5 list him as the sole inventor; the other 15 have co-inventors, including Jonathan Chandler, Daniel Goldman, and Sean Sandys among others, who worked on the technical implementation across the family’s history from 2013 to 2025.
FIS Coordinates are the applied coordinate values assigned to each business, job, and product, identifying its functional role, position, and attributes in the economy - the operational output of running the Locus Model against real data.
Virtual Economics: A Portrait of an Economic System is Riggs’s forthcoming trade-facing book, restating the Locus Model for a general readership in accessible language. It introduces the terms Functional Address, the Functional Triad, Economic Cartography, Natural Functional Order, Bounded Order / Unbounded Fill, Functional Twins, and Economic Twin. It was unpublished as of 2026.
A locus is 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 flows of products and services, forming the linked, self-sustaining system the model describes.
The formal specification is Systems Economics: The Parts and Processes of Economic Systems (Locus Analytics, 2019, 3rd edition, 294 pages). The full patent-by-patent record, with titles, summaries, and links, is on Patents; every coined term is defined in depth in the Lexicon.
Twenty granted U.S. patents, inventor and assignee Locus LP, with priority dating to March 15, 2013. See the full line-by-line record on Patents.
Systems Syntax is the logical data model on which a representation of a functional system is constructed - the machine-side counterpart to the Locus Language. Where the language governs how a human states an economic sentence, Systems Syntax governs how a database holds one.
The Functional Information System (FIS) is a system, patented in 2014, 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. 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.
Locus Theory is the comprehensive systems theory of all activities and resources used in an economy, from which the Locus Model is built. It’s 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.
Functional Space is 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. Patent-backed by US 12,242,431.
For speaking, consulting, academic collaboration, or venture inquiries, go to Contact. There is no open booking widget - only serious, qualified inquiries: describe the problem you are trying to solve.
Riggs is the author of Systems Economics: The Parts and Processes of Economic Systems (Locus Analytics, 2019, 3rd edition), and co-author, with Jonathan Chandler and Mark T. Finn, of 'An Index Methodology for Diversifying Business Risk' (The Journal of Index Investing, 2017) and its companion 'Practical Applications of An Index Methodology for Diversifying Business Risk' (Practical Applications, 2018). He also wrote 'Systems Economics: A New Prescription for Risk Management' for Pensions & Investments (2019) and 'Gene Editing to Lead a New Agricultural Revolution' for Future Farming. See Courses and Author & Social Profiles for the full reading list.
An Economic System is 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.
Economic Cartography is the practice of charting an economic system by its functional coordinates so the whole can be seen, compared, and managed - the deliberate parallel to geographic and temporal charting: maps made space addressable, calendars made time addressable, and functional coordinates make economic position addressable.
Economic Physiology is the activity dimension of the Locus Model - the branch dealing with the actions a system performs to produce its product. It treats an economic system’s procure/produce/exchange/manage cycle as the physiology of a living economic organism.
Riggs co-founded Cibus, the leading precision gene-editing company in biotechnology, and served as Chief Executive Officer from October 2021 to June 2026, applying the Locus Model’s functional-systems approach to plant biology through the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS). He transitioned to Chairman of the Board in June 2026 as Craig Wichner became CEO. See Pharma & Life Sciences.
The Labor Barcode is the four-field barcode capturing a job’s functional role in the economy - the same functional-coordinate logic applied to individual employment rather than a company’s product line.
Functional Trajectory is 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 an industry-code history isn’t - reclassification doesn’t corrupt the series. Patent-backed by US 11,151,096.
The Production System Model identifies and defines the parts and processes necessary to produce a product, from which functional markers are derived - the intermediate step between the Locus Model’s theory and the functional tags actually assigned to real data.
Locus Functional Markers are the coded functional references derived from the Production System Model and assigned to entities in the FIS database - the tags that make a real business, job, or product findable by function.
A Barcode is 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’s consumed downstream. Like a retail barcode, it’s a compact, machine-readable identifier that resolves to a complete description.
The Media Kit has his headshot, short and long bios, and fast facts for press, speaking, and editorial use. Author & Social Profiles has his published writing, interviews, and professional profiles.
Structural Resources are used by performing a task directly and are physically persistent, ready without transformation - people, space, and equipment. Supporting Resources are consumed in enabling a structural resource to perform - information, money, and energy.
The earliest granted patent in the family, US 8,380,604 (2013), covers a non-price accounting data-based index - the foundational FIS patent, using functional data rather than price data to construct an index.
The Natural Functional Order is 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 economic activity can be compared along across centuries.
Yes. Riggs speaks on functional classification, Systems Economics, and the Locus Model for institutional investor, academic/research, and general senior-leadership audiences - recent engagements include the Canaccord Genuity Growth Conference and the Roth Conference’s AgTech panel on gene editing. See Courses for keynote titles and reading strands by audience.
Functional Location is 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. Patent-backed by US 11,657,026 and US 12,242,431.
Procure, produce, exchange, and manage. Those four phases divide into twelve divisions using a pre-, central-, and post- framework, and the subdivision repeats down to thirty-six sub-divisions.
Riggs holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Middlebury College and an MBA from Columbia University. See Credentials for his full education and professional record.
All 20 are assigned to Locus LP, the entity holding the IP behind the Locus Model and FIS.
The Functional Triad is 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 we no longer notice we’re doing it; the third has never been charted at all - supplying it is the purpose of the work.
Space is addressable through latitude and longitude; time is addressable through date and hour. Functional Coordinates supply economics’ missing third reference frame: what, alongside where and when. Once every part of the economy has that address, it can be mirrored digitally, compared across industries, and traced over time - the same operations geography and the calendar already made possible.
Functional Proximity is 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 - a measure a category-based taxonomy can’t produce at all.
Functional Twins are the accurate functional representations that mirror real-world resources and activities inside the model. An Economic Twin is the functional counterpart to the spatial twin supplied by GIS and the temporal twin supplied by the calendar - the digital mirror of an economic system, built from Functional Addresses.
A Work Locus is the sentence structure in the Locus Language describing the function of an economic system - the activity side. A Resource Locus describes a resource performing that function - the noun side. Together they form the model’s complete descriptive grammar.
Syntax Data is the company Riggs founded (as Locus Analytics) in 2009 to develop and patent the Functional Information System; Syntax and Locus Analytics merged in March 2023. He serves as Executive Chairman, building the coordinate-based information infrastructure for finance and economic data described on Financial Markets.
Rory Riggs is an inventor, executive, and investor who applies one system, the Locus Model, across biotechnology, finance, and economics. He is Executive Chairman of Syntax Data, the founder and former Chairman of Royalty Pharma, and Chairman of the Board of Cibus. See About Rory for his full board and governance record.
A functional coordinate locates any business, job, product, or resource by what it does and where it sits in the order of work, computed the same way every time by anyone following the same rules - not assigned by a committee, the way an industry code is.
Riggs currently serves as Executive Chairman of Syntax Data, Chairman of the Board of Cibus, General Partner of Scientia Ventures, CEO and Trustee of the WEBs ETF Trust, and director of the New York Genome Center and the Feinstein Institute (the research arm of Northwell Health). See About Rory for the full board and governance record.
Systems Economics is Riggs’s own field designation, formally specified in his textbook Systems Economics: The Parts and Processes of Economic Systems (Locus Analytics, 2019, 3rd edition) and protected by a family of 20 granted U.S. patents. The stratified-weighting methodology built on FIS was tested and published in two peer-reviewed papers - 'An Index Methodology for Diversifying Business Risk' (The Journal of Index Investing, 2017) and its companion practitioner piece (Practical Applications, 2018) - which found that FIS-based stratified-weighted indexes delivered significantly higher returns than standard capitalization- and equal-weighted benchmarks. Beyond that peer-reviewed empirical test, Systems Economics as a field is Riggs’s own proposal rather than one adopted by an established academic body or standards organization.
A Functional Query is the retrieval method in which entities are found by functional coordinate rather than 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.
Royalty Pharma is the pharmaceutical royalty company Riggs co-founded in 1996 with a $60 million start, building it into the world’s largest acquirer of pharmaceutical royalties - roughly $26 billion by 2026, with partial royalty rights on seven of the top thirty drugs sold in the United States. He served as Chairman from 2003 until his resignation as a director in June 2024.
The Syntax Stratified Indices are benchmark indices Riggs built on functional rather than conventional sector classification - the first indices constructed this way, and a direct commercial application of the Coordinate System to index construction and portfolio risk.
The Locus Language is the model’s formal language, in which activities function as verbs, resources as nouns, and a locus is a complete sentence describing a real economic phenomenon. It 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 generative language rather than a fixed code list, so new economic situations are expressible without amending the standard.
The Locus Model is the framework Riggs formulated, with patent priority to March 2013, that sets out how any product-producing system 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 isn’t 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 the Coordinate System.
A Subject Resource Role is the specific functional contribution a resource makes in producing a product. There are five: space-infrastructure, operator, direction, financial capacity, and power. The roles make the resource taxonomy functional rather than descriptive - a resource is classified by what it does in production, not by what it is.
The same pattern repeats across three decades: identify a domain where the right system does not yet exist, then build it. Royalty Pharma (1996) built the market for pharmaceutical royalties as an asset class; Syntax Data built a coordinate-based information infrastructure for finance and economic data; Cibus applies pharmaceutical-grade production standards to plant biology through precision gene editing - all built on the same underlying framework, the Locus Model.
Terminality is 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 has to terminate somewhere; terminality fixes that point at the customer’s Central Department Cycle - the construct that keeps the model’s recursive structure finite and computable.
Cibus was named #2 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2024 in agriculture, cited directly for the production discipline Riggs brought from pharmaceutical development to plant biology. In 2024, Riggs also received the United Hospital Fund’s Health Care Leadership Award, alongside Margaret Crotty, for work at the intersection of health care, public health, and biotechnology.
Every economic classification system in general use - NAICS, SIC, ISIC, NACE, GICS, ICB, TRBC, RBICS - answers the same question: what industry is this business in? None answers the different question: what does this business functionally do, and where does that fall in the order of work? They organize data by surface appearance and historical convention, not by function, so two entities can look identical by industry code and be functionally unrelated, or look unrelated and be functionally identical.
The family spans the full mechanics of the system: Functional Coordinates (US 9,910,910; US 10,019,509), Functional Location and Functional Space (US 11,657,026; US 12,242,431), Functional Trajectory (US 11,151,096), stratified and segmented portfolio construction (US 9,245,299; US 11,227,028; US 12,189,709), and the underlying Functional Information System and Systems Syntax data model (US 8,990,268; US 9,361,358, and others). See the full line-by-line record on Patents.
Yes. Riggs takes on strategic and institutional advisory engagements for institutional investors, boards, and research organizations on functional classification methodology and its application to risk and portfolio construction.
Systems Economics is the field - the discipline name Riggs introduced for studying economies as living systems. The Locus Model is the framework within that field, setting out how any product-producing system is built and how it runs. Functional Coordinates are the instrument the model produces: the actual addresses assigned to real businesses, jobs, and resources.
Bounded Order / Unbounded Fill is the paired principle that the functional order is fixed while the actors, technologies, and outputs occupying it vary without limit. The order is bounded; what fills each position is not.
A Functional Address is 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.
Riggs was a Managing Director in mergers and acquisitions at PaineWebber from 1981 to 1990, then Chief Executive Officer of RF&P Corporation from 1991 to 1995, a real estate investment company owned by the Virginia State Retirement System. See the Career Timeline for the full chronology.
Riggs was a founder or early-stage investor in SUGEN, BioMatrix (President, CFO, and Director, 1996-2000, overseeing the Synvisc launch), FibroGen (co-founder and director since October 1993), and Intra-Cellular Therapies (director, 2014-2025), and served as a director of each. See Pharma & Life Sciences for the full portfolio of life-sciences foundings.
The Enterprise Barcode is the twenty-locus barcode capturing a company’s functional role in the economy - one product line together with every economic system connected to it. It’s organized into sections (Enterprise, Intermediary, Customer, Co-Customer, Customer of Customer) crossed by levels running from agent down to constituent resource, and it’s the model’s principal commercial artifact.
The Activity Cycle is 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. 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.
Every rigorous science rests on a coordinate system - biology, chemistry, and physics each have one. 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. The Locus Model supplies that missing third frame - a fixed set of functional positions, and rules that derive any activity’s or resource’s position from its own facts.
Systems Economics draws on three disciplines that each solved the same class of problem in their own domain - organizing complex entities by function rather than surface appearance: biological systems (economies as self-sustaining, repeating activity cycles rather than static snapshots), botanical classification (taxonomy by function and structure, not appearance), and categorical theory (the mathematics of structure-preserving relationships, the formal grounding for a system that computes rather than merely labels).
Economic Morphology is the resource dimension of the Locus Model - the branch 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’s made of; the analogy to biology is explicit and load-bearing - an economy has an anatomy.
Announcement of Rory Riggs's appointment as CEO of Cibus, naming him a pioneer in Systems Economics.
Cibus Appoints Co-Founder Rory Riggs as Chief Executive Officer
Coverage of the Cibus/Calyxt merger closing, including a Riggs quote on the combined company's patent portfolio.
Cibus named #2 Most Innovative Company in agriculture for 2024, with a quote from Riggs.
Cibus Named to Fast Company's Annual List of the World's Most Innovative Companies of 2024
Announcement of Riggs's transition from CEO to Chairman of the Board at Cibus as Craig Wichner becomes CEO.
Cibus Names Agricultural Biotechnology Leader Craig Wichner as Chief Executive Officer
Coverage of the Cibus Oberlin facility opening, including Riggs's quote on applying pharmaceutical quality standards to plant biology.
Cibus Opens Gene Editing Facility for Trait Production
Authored article by Rory Riggs on precision gene editing and its application to agricultural trait development.
Gene Editing to Lead a New Agricultural Revolution
UHF is proud to present the 2024 Health Care Leadership Award to Margaret Crotty and Rory Riggs, for their important work at the intersection of health care, public health, and biotechnology
Margaret Crotty and Rory Riggs Health Care Leadership Award, 2024
Proposed Merger Shows That When it Comes to Gene Editing, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
In her junior year at Middlebury, she founded TEDxMiddlebury, a local chapter of the TED Conference. A full year of planning went into the event, from designing the website to timing out the cookie breaks. The first event featured 16 speakers, most of them Middlebury alums. During the after-party, Cloe received a phone call. It was Rory Riggs ’75, the founder of an analytics company and a longtime TED Conference attendee.'He was calling from a mountain,' Cloe told me. 'I think it was Kilimanjaro.' Riggs was actually hiking in Jordan and had been tuning into a livestream of the event. On the phone call he offered to cover all of Cloe’s expenses to attend the 2011 TEDActive in Palm Springs. It was an act of extreme generosity that changed her life.
Coverage of an open letter authored by Riggs as Royalty Pharma Chairman to the Elan board.
Royalty Pharma Co-Founder Writes Open Letter to Board of Elan Ahead of EGM
Launch announcement with a direct quote from Riggs on ESG analytics.
Syntax LLC Announces Launch of Stratified LargeCap ESG Index
Op-ed authored by Rory Riggs articulating the case for functional, systems-based classification of economic data as an alternative to conventional sector-based risk models.
Commentary: Systems Economics — A New Prescription for Risk Management
Systems Economics: A New Prescription for Risk Management
The Parts and Processes of Economic Systems
The formal textbook specification of the Locus Model — the field designation for the study of economies as living systems built from repeating, ordered functional activities and the resources that staff them. Defines Systems Economics, the Theory of Economic Systems, Economic Physiology, Economic Morphology, the Activity Cycle, the Locus Language, and the Barcode architecture (Enterprise Barcode, Labor Barcode, Summary Barcode).
Covers strategy, valuations, negotiation, tax planning, closing services, due diligence, risk management, postmerger integration, antitrust guidelines, and the global market
Chapter 18: Payment Modes and Acquisition Currencies
Forthcoming trade-facing statement of the Locus Model for a general readership, restating the same functional-coordinate framework as Systems Economics in accessible language. Introduces the terms Functional Address, Natural Functional Order, Bounded Order / Unbounded Fill, Functional Twins, Economic Twin, the Functional Triad, and Economic Cartography. Unpublished as of 2026.
The coordinate axis ordering each recurring economic activity and assigning it a position within the 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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
A product that fulfills an activity within another system’s Activity Cycle.
The intermediary supplying a networking function without taking possession.
The two classes of activity available to a work locus, distinguishing activity-product from resource-product orientation.
AP Work Locus Activities / RP Work Locus Activities
A product line not represented by the firm’s Summary 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.
The intersection of a section and a level, containing a locus and any markers.
A horizontal cross-section of a barcode; each describes a different class of economic entity.
An identifying tag adding interpretive information to a locus within a field.
A vertical cross-section of the Enterprise Barcode; each characterizes a different economic agent.
The paired principle that the functional order is fixed while the actors, technologies, and outputs occupying it vary without limit.
The Activity Cycle of the system responsible for producing that system’s own product.
An economic agent using the enterprise’s product jointly with the customer.
A resource whose constituent parts belong to more than one category.
Activities positioned diametrically across the cycle share properties through matched relative position.
A resource requiring further refinement, incorporation, or combination before use.
The locus describing the function of a constituent resource, typically paired with a Final Resource Locus.
A resource that changes category as a consequence of incorporation into another.
The economic agent consuming the enterprise’s product as part of its own operations.
The economic agent consuming the customer’s product as part of its own operations.
A Work Group situated at the Central Department Cycle of an Economic System.
The barcode level identifying the department-level Work Group where the product is ultimately used.
The role filled by information: carrying both the instruction to act and the specification of how, when, and where.
The syntactic category recognizing that a subject resource can be what separates different methods of performing the same activity.
The notation representing a range of admissible values for an activity or resource.
The twelve-part granularity of the Activity Cycle.
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.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
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.
The functional counterpart to the spatial twin supplied by GIS and the temporal twin supplied by the calendar.
The economic agent whose product line is the subject of a given 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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
The locus occupying the enterprise level of the Enterprise Barcode.
A finished resource requiring no further modification, ready to serve as a subject resource.
The locus describing the final resource into which a constituent resource is incorporated.
The role filled by money: funding the other resources.
The applied coordinate values assigned to each business, job, and product in a functional information system.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
Inventor of the coordinate-based Locus Model and Functional Information System for classifying economic activity by function rather than conventional industry category.
The formal coordinate framework used to analyze economic information by functional position rather than by industry category. Source: US 9,910,910 · US 10,019,509.
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. Source: US 9,910,910 · US 10,019,509.
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. Source: US 8,990,268 · US 9,098,564 · US 9,361,358.
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. Source: US 11,657,026 · US 12,242,431.
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.
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.
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. Source: US 12,242,431.
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. Source: US 11,151,096.
The accurate functional representations mirroring real-world resources and activities inside the model.
Built the Syntax Stratified Indices, benchmark indices constructed on functional rather than conventional sector classification.
Index construction and portfolio classification
A supporting cycle oriented toward producing the inputs the central cycle acts upon.
The economic agent acting on the enterprise’s product before the customer receives it.
The Enterprise Barcode fields describing how the enterprise’s product is consumed inside the customer’s own system.
The locus recording the work group in which a labor resource is deployed.
The coding practice of leaving an FRL blank while its paired CRL is filled.
The four-field barcode capturing a job’s functional role in the economy. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
The coded functional references derived from the Production System Model and assigned to entities in the FIS database.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
Managing Director in M&A at PaineWebber, 1981–1990.
Pre-, central-, and post- positions imply shared characteristics and comparable skill requirements.
The second half of the Activity Cycle, in which the product is exchanged and the proceeds are directed into the next cycle.
The classification approach in which an entity carries several simultaneous functional attributes rather than one exclusive industry code.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
The role filled by people and equipment: transforming inputs into outputs by applying power and direction.
Activities falling near one another in the cycle share properties through sequential flow.
The co-customer situation in which both parties hold the same contractual relationship to the enterprise.
The intermediary subsidizing or paying the enterprise, enabling customer access.
Founded and built Royalty Pharma into the world's largest acquirer of pharmaceutical royalties, helping create the category as an investable asset class.
The four-part granularity of the Activity Cycle.
The role filled by energy: energizing the operator to perform.
Led Cibus's application of production-system methodology to plant biology through the Rapid Trait Development System.
Precision gene editing / agricultural biotechnology
The co-customer situation in which only one party holds a contractual relationship.
A revenue-producing product of a firm, used strictly with reference to the Enterprise Barcode.
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.
The first half of the Activity Cycle, in which resources are acquired and converted into a product.
The grouping of a CRL, an FRL, and a Work Group Locus describing one instance of product usage.
The model identifying the parts and processes necessary to produce a product, comprising the activities and the resources of production.
Cibus's precision gene-editing platform for agricultural trait development, applying production-system methodology to plant biology.
An Activity Cycle defined relative to a specific product, with production fixed at position 2.2.2.
The coordinate axis ordering resources by functional role, category, and stage of readiness.
One of the six functional groupings into which every resource resolves.
The sentence structure describing a resource performing a specific function.
A product eventually used as a subject resource by another system.
The naming convention governing resource-product activities in the Standardized Activity Cycle.
The role filled by space resources: supplying the location, environment, and structure in which activity occurs.
The four-level granularity marking a resource’s proximity to readiness for use.
An Activity Cycle defined relative to the economy as a whole, producing fixed definitions for cross-entity classification.
The index-construction methodology underlying the Syntax Stratified Indices, grouping securities by functional attribute rather than conventional sector classification.
Resources used by performing a task directly; physically persistent, ready without transformation. People, space, equipment.
Divisions descending from a common phase resemble one another by descent.
A final resource, ready for use, contributing a specific functional role to production.
A supporting cycle oriented toward producing the subject resources the central cycle deploys.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
The sub-level granularity refining distinctions inside a stage.
The Enterprise Barcode covering at least forty percent of a company’s revenue, standing for its principal economic function.
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.
Resources consumed in enabling a structural resource to perform. Information, money, energy.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
The marker recording what a Work Group acts upon, and the test for whether that Work Group is the last in the chain.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
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. Source: part of the Locus LP patent family; see Patents.
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.
The generalized systems theory of all activities and resources used in an economy, from which the Locus Model is built.
The single coordinate frame into which classification systems such as ISIC, HS, EBOPS, and ISCO are resolved.
Unified FIS Coordinate-Based Representation
The intermediary taking inventory of the product and reselling it.
An Economic System operating at any level within an economic agent, typically below the department.
The Activity Cycle of a single Work Group; a Central Department Cycle is defined by a cluster of them.
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.
Rory Riggs is an inventor, executive, and investor who applies one system, the Locus Model, across biotechnology, finance, and economics.
Managing Member of Balfour Venture Partners.
President, CFO, and Director of BioMatrix (NYSE: BMX), overseeing the launch of Synvisc, a viscosupplementation treatment.
President, CFO, and Director at BioMatrix Inc.
Transitioned from Chief Executive Officer to Chairman of the Board in June 2026 as Craig Wichner became CEO.
Chairman of the Board at Cibus Global, Ltd.
Co-founder and CEO of Cibus, the leading precision gene-editing company for agriculture. Applied the Locus Model's functional-systems approach to plant biology through the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS).
Chief Executive Officer at Cibus Global, Ltd.
Chair of eReceivables, a healthcare service technology company.
Managing Director in the mergers and acquisitions group at PaineWebber.
Managing Director, Mergers & Acquisitions
Managing Director, Mergers & Acquisitions at PaineWebber Inc.
CEO of RF&P, a real estate investment company owned by the Virginia State Retirement System.
Chief Executive Officer at RF&P Corporation
Co-founded Royalty Pharma in 1996 with a $60 million start; built it into the world's largest acquirer of pharmaceutical royalties, holding partial royalty rights on seven of the top thirty drugs sold in the United States. Served as Chairman from 2003 and resigned as a director on June 6, 2024.
Chairman and Founder at Royalty Pharma plc
General Partner and co-founder of Scientia Ventures.
Founded Locus Analytics in 2009 as an economic research firm to pioneer Systems Economics and develop and patent the Functional Information System. Syntax and Locus Analytics merged in March 2023. Built the coordinate-based Locus Model and FIS information infrastructure for finance and economic data, and the Syntax Stratified Indices.
Executive Chairman / Founder at Syntax Data (Syntax LLC / Locus Analytics)
CEO and Trustee of the Syntax-affiliated ETF trust since 2017.
CEO and Trustee at WEBS ETF Trust (Syntax ETF Trust)
Angel investor and board member of the fintech company Bond Street Marketplace.
Director of the Feinstein Institute, the research arm of Northwell Health.
Board Chair and director of GeneNews, later StageZero Life Sciences, since 1998.
Director of Intra-Cellular Therapies from January 2014, serving on the Audit Committee.
Kyntra Bio (formerly known as FibroGen Inc.)
Co-founder and director of FibroGen since October 1993 — his longest confirmed board tenure.
Director of the New York Genome Center, his primary current nonprofit board.
Syntax Data (Syntax LLC / Locus Analytics)
A continuation of US 11,657,026 B2 computing functional relationships and n-dimensional locations of data entities — the most recently granted patent in the Locus Model family.
Algorithmic method for dynamically computing complex relationships in functional systems
Forms a stratified, segmented composite data structure grouping and weighting data entities by functional attributes, applied to a digital trading and securities management platform.
Digital platform for trading and management of investment securities
Systems and methods using a logical data model to aggregate data entities and analyze economic information via a functional coordinate system.
Domain-specific syntactic tagging in a functional information system
A logical data model that aggregates data entities and analyzes economic information using a functional coordinate system, forming one of the foundational patents of the Locus Model / Functional Information System.
Domain-specific syntax tagging in a functional information system
Algorithmically modifies a functional system representation based on functional trajectory signals via a graph-based systems syntax — the basis for the Affinity Lenses / functional peer grouping capability.
Dynamic syntactic affinity group formation in a high-dimensional functional information system
Algorithmically determines the composition of elements in an n-dimensional functional system via a logical data model, enabling real-time prediction of interactions.
High-dimensional systems databases for real-time prediction of interactions in a functional system
Forms a stratified, segmented composite data structure by weighting data entities according to functional attributes, with positive and negative bias adjustments.
Hyperdimensional vector representations for algorithmic functional grouping of complex systems
An algorithmic method for computing complex relationships among objects via their functional locations in n-dimensional functional space.
Matching multidimensional projections of functional space
A logical data model aggregating data entities and analyzing economic information via a functional coordinate system, extended to multi-dimensional modeling.
Multi-dimensional modeling in a functional information system
An algorithmic method for computing complex relationships among data entities via positioning within n-dimensional functional space, enabling predictive search and navigation.
Predictive search and navigation for functional information systems
Forms a stratified, segmented composite investment portfolio by grouping securities according to risk-correlated functional attributes with adjustable weighting biases — the patent basis for the Syntax Stratified Indices.
Segmentation and stratification of composite portfolios of investment securities
A logical data model for aggregating data entities and analyzing economic information via a functional coordinate system, extended into graph modeling.
Syntactic graph modeling in a functional information system
A logical data model aggregating data entities and analyzing economic information via a functional coordinate system, documenting the activity-product referent — an economic system occupying a functional slot in another system's Activity Cycle without transferring a resource.
Syntactic loci and fields in a functional information system
Rory Riggs is an inventor, executive, and investor who applies one system, the Locus Model, across biotechnology, finance, and economics. Mr. Riggs is Executive Chairman of Syntax Data, which has built a foundational coordinate-based information infrastructure for finance and economic data based on his patented Locus Model and Functional Information System (FIS).
President, CFO, and Director, 1996–2000; oversaw the launch of Synvisc.
Co-founder; CEO 2021–2026, then Chairman of the Board.
Current director of the research arm of Northwell Health.
Co-founder and director since October 1993.
Managing Director, Mergers & Acquisitions, 1981–1990.
CEO, 1991–1995, a Virginia State Retirement System–owned real estate investment company.
Co-founder and Chairman (2003–2024); built the pharmaceutical royalty asset class.
Founder and Executive Chairman; built the Locus Model, Functional Information System, and Syntax Stratified Indices.
Was he the sole inventor on all of them?
Where can I read the technical specification?
What is an 'Economic System,' in this model's specific sense?
Where can I find his headshot, bio, or press assets?
What's the difference between Structural Resources and Supporting Resources?
What was the first, foundational patent?
Does he speak at conferences or keynote events?
What are the four phases of the Activity Cycle?
How is this like latitude/longitude or a calendar date?
What are Functional Twins and an Economic Twin?
What is a Work Locus vs. a Resource Locus?
What is a 'functional coordinate,' in plain terms?
Is Systems Economics a recognized academic field, or independently validated?
What is Royalty Pharma, and what was Rory's role there?
What is the throughline across his career?
What recognition has he or Cibus received?
What's wrong with GICS, SIC, NAICS, and similar classification systems?
Can he advise institutions, boards, or investors?
What is the difference between Systems Economics and the Locus Model?
What is 'Bounded Order / Unbounded Fill'?
What did he do before founding Royalty Pharma?
What other companies has he founded or invested in?
Why does economics need a coordinate system?
What disciplines is Systems Economics drawn from, and why those three?
This paper introduces a new risk measure called Active Business Risk, based on the excess level of sector or industry exposure in a portfolio or index and shows that Active Business Risk is an important driver of portfolio return. Most passive indices carry unmanaged industry exposures due to their weighting methodology (e.g. market cap or equal weight). The paper compares the Active Business Risk Score for several core equity indices that are perceived to be well diversified and shows that they currently carry an elevated level of Active Business Risk. Portfolios with high Active Business Risk Scores have higher sensitivity to economic shocks which impact companies with related business risks, often causing the portfolio to perform poorly relative to more diversified alternatives. We conclude that Active Business Risk is a quantifiable risk that is not adequately diversified by cap weighted indices, leading to inefficient capture of their potential equity risk premia.
This article introduces a new passive weighting methodology for diversifying business risk: functional information system (FIS)–based stratified weighting. The FIS-based stratified-weight approach effectively diversifies related business risk (RBR), such as supply chain dynamics, customer groups, product types, or other operational attributes that affect groups of companies that share common earnings drivers. The proposed methodology addresses overconcentrations of business risk that regularly occur in capitalization-weighted or equal-weighted indexes. This approach maintains a diversified weighting of an index’s underlying business risks by allocating constituents to specific RBR groupings, defined using FIS classification, and then fixing the weight of each group via stratification. The motivation behind this methodology is the fact that stock performance is the result of business performance and diversifying business performance is the ultimate goal of a diversified equity index. The authors demonstrate the performance benefit of stratified-weighted versions of the S&P 500 and S&P MidCap 400 indexes over traditional market capitalization weighting and equal weighting, especially following periods of economic stress. They find that FIS-based stratified-weight indexes deliver consistent and significantly higher returns relative to standard capitalization-weighted market indexes and equal-weighted indexes (on average, 389 bps per annum for the S&P 500 and 175 bps per annum for the S&P 500 equal weight), while exhibiting comparable beta and volatility. This article proposes that these results are robust and are not related to the choice of the universe or to particular market conditions.
An Index Methodology for Diversifying Business Risk
The financial services industry, which has ballooned from an 8 to 40% share of all after tax corporate profits created in the American economy over the past 50 years, is undergoing an evolutionary shift. Following a period of sustained growth in assets and power, significant advancements in technology, algorithms and information availability are revising the ways in which long-term investors interact with, and invest in, the capitalist system. We call this new paradigm of long-term investing ‘Organic Finance’, and it refers to a more professional and engaged community of asset owners that are increasingly focused on rooting their investment activities in the real economy. Specifically, Organic Finance asks that asset owners develop the capacity to understand the ingredients and incentives in the financial products they consume, which ensures that the financial derivation inherent in financial products does not negatively distort the risk and return profile of the underlying assets. This paper builds upon the large body of work on risk factors, which highlights the need for investors to clearly understand the underlying risk premia they wish to be exposed to and choose assets accordingly. More specifically, this paper highlights how a missing ‘organic finance factor’, which refers to the distortion/clarity with which a financial product represents the underlying economy, can also drive performance and thus deserves to be included in the factor toolkit. Indeed, we argue that factors apply as much to products as they do to underlying assets. To illustrate, we offer a case study of a newly formed passive investable stock index that uses a ‘systems approach’ to analyze and classify the constituents based on their functional characteristics.
Organic Finance in Action: Practical Tools for a New Paradigm
In An Index Methodology for Diversifying Business Risk, published in The Journal of Index Investing, Rory Riggs and Jonathan Chandler, both of Syntax, LLC, and Mark T. Finn, of Vantage Consulting Group, introduce a methodology for constructing an equity index in which the weight assigned to each component is determined by reference to the nature of the business risks to which it is exposed. The methodology uses the technique of statistical stratification to maximize the index’s diversification across different categories of business risks. Using the populations of the S&P 500 and the S&P MidCap 400 indexes, the authors compare the performance of stratified indexes created using their methodology to both market-capitalization-weighted and equal-weighted indexes comprising the same components. They find that the stratified indexes delivered higher returns and higher Sharpe ratios than the others.
Practical Applications of An Index Methodology for Diversifying Business Risk
The personal site of Rory Riggs — inventor of the Locus Model and Functional Coordinates, founder of Systems Economics, and Executive Chairman of Syntax Data. Documents his work across financial classification (FIS, Syntax Stratified Indices), agricultural biotechnology (Cibus, Rapid Trait Development System), and pharmaceutical royalties (Royalty Pharma).