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.

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

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.

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 & Morphology

The processes an economic system performs, and the parts it is built from.

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.

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.

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

The Barcode Architecture & Functional Information Systems

How functional coordinates are recorded, and the applied layer that puts them to work.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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, GICS, ICB, TRBC, Sector, Industry, Sub-Industry.

Key concepts

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