Lexicon
106 approved terms, organized the way Rory Riggs organizes them himself: one foundational construct, the pillar frameworks built on it, and the supporting vocabulary each pillar breaks down into. Every term links through to its own page with the full definition, sourcing, and the specific patents and articles behind it.
Pillar term anchors a whole section of the model. Course marks a term explored in depth within one of the seven Locus Theory courses.
The Frame
The single foundational construct everything else in this lexicon builds from.
Locus Model Course
The framework that establishes a coordinate-based functional language for living systems: a fixed lexicon and a syntax for combining its terms, positioning any economic activity by what it does and where it sits in the order of work — not by industry category. Read more →
Pillar Principles and Frameworks
The umbrella frameworks and named theories that organize everything else in this lexicon. Every supporting term below elaborates one of these.
Functional Coordinates Pillar term Course
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. Read more →
Systems Economics Course
The field designation for the study of economies as living systems built from repeating, ordered functional activities and the resources that staff them. Read more →
Locus Theory Course
The comprehensive systems theory of all activities and resources used in an economy, stated in two branches: the Locus Theory of Economic Systems (the dominant, primary logic) and the Locus Theory of People (a secondary branch applying that same logic to individuals and laborers). Read more →
Locus Language Course
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. Read more →
Economic Physiology Course
The activity dimension of the Locus Model — the branch of systems economics dealing with the actions a system performs to produce its product. Read more →
Economic Morphology Course
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. Read more →
Activity Cycle Course
The full ordered sequence of actions an Economic System performs in producing a product. Read more →
Barcode Course
An ordered arrangement of loci that records and communicates the functional position of an economic entity. Read more →
Enterprise Barcode Course
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 — organized into sections (Enterprise, Intermediary, Customer, Co-Customer, Customer of Customer) crossed by levels running from agent down to constituent resource. Read more →
Functional Information System (FIS) Pillar term Course
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. Read more →
Natural Functional Order
The stable, invariant sequence of positions every ongoing economic system must fill, independent of geography, culture, technology, or era. Read more →
Supporting Concepts — Functional Coordinates
The working vocabulary built on top of Functional Coordinates — the coordinate frame, its computed positions, and the practice of charting by them.
Functional Coordinate System Pillar term Course
The formal coordinate framework used to analyze economic information by functional position rather than by industry category. Read more →
Functional Location
The position an economic element occupies in functional space, determined by what it does rather than where or when it operates. Read more →
Functional Proximity Pillar term Course
The measured distance between two functional locations, enabling comparison across otherwise unrelated entities. Read more →
Functional Trajectory Pillar term Course
The computed path an element traces through functional locations over time. Read more →
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. Read more →
The Functional Triad
The three-coordinate reference frame of time, space, and function. Read more →
Economic Cartography
The practice of charting an economic system by its functional coordinates so that the whole can be seen, compared, and managed. Read more →
Systems Syntax Pillar term Course
The logical data model on which a representation of a functional system is constructed — the machine-side counterpart to the Locus Language. Read more →
Supporting Concepts — The Locus Model
The vocabulary of the model itself: the theory it rests on, the base unit of activity, and the sentence structures that describe it.
Theory of Economic Systems
The generalized systems theory of all activities and resources used in an economy, from which the Locus Model is built. Read more →
Locus Course
The base unit of economic activity: a single pairing of an activity with the resources required to produce its output. Read more →
Economic System Course
The abstracted representation of a generalized, product-producing economic agent — applicable to a business, government, organization, department, or individual. Read more →
Work Locus Course
The sentence structure in the Locus Language describing the function of an Economic System. Read more →
Resource Locus Pillar term Course
The sentence structure describing a resource performing a specific function. Read more →
Job Locus
The locus recording the work group in which a labor resource is deployed. Read more →
Enterprise Locus Pillar term
The locus occupying the enterprise level of the Enterprise Barcode. Read more →
Activity-Product (AP) Work Locus Activities and Resource-Product (RP) Work Locus Activities
The two classes of activity available to a work locus, distinguishing activity-product from resource-product orientation. Read more →
Resource-Product (RP) Verbs
The naming convention governing resource-product activities in the Standardized Activity Cycle. Read more →
Economic Physiology — Activity Architecture
The activity side of the model: how the Activity Cycle divides, repeats, and relates to itself at every level.
Product Sequence
The first half of the Activity Cycle, in which resources are acquired and converted into a product. Read more →
Money Sequence
The second half of the Activity Cycle, in which the product is exchanged and the proceeds are directed into the next cycle. Read more →
Phase
The four-part granularity of the Activity Cycle. Read more →
Division
The twelve-part granularity of the Activity Cycle. Read more →
Central Department Cycle
The Activity Cycle of the system responsible for producing that system’s own product. Read more →
Supporting Cycles
The cycles producing the resources a Central Department Cycle consumes — two kinds, Subject Resource Production Cycles and Input Resource Production Cycles, with seven instances by convention. Read more →
Subject Resource Production Cycle Pillar term
A supporting cycle oriented toward producing the subject resources the central cycle deploys. Read more →
Input Resource Production Cycle Pillar term
A supporting cycle oriented toward producing the inputs the central cycle acts upon. Read more →
Work Group Pillar term
An Economic System operating at any level within an economic agent, typically below the department. Read more →
Work Group Cycle
The Activity Cycle of a single Work Group; a Central Department Cycle is defined by a cluster of them. Read more →
Department
A Work Group situated at the Central Department Cycle of an Economic System. Read more →
Reoriented Activity Cycle
An Activity Cycle defined relative to a specific product, with production fixed at position 2.2.2. Read more →
Standardized Activity Cycle
An Activity Cycle defined relative to the economy as a whole, producing fixed definitions for cross-entity classification. Read more →
Order Relationship
Activities falling near one another in the cycle share properties through sequential flow. Read more →
Subdivision Relationship
Divisions descending from a common phase resemble one another by descent. Read more →
Complementary Relationship
Activities positioned diametrically across the cycle share properties through matched relative position. Read more →
Modifier Relationship
Pre-, central-, and post- positions imply shared characteristics and comparable skill requirements. Read more →
Activity Product
A product that fulfills an activity within another system’s Activity Cycle. Read more →
Economic Morphology — Resource Architecture
The resource side of the model: the roles, categories, and stages every resource resolves into.
Subject Resource Course
A final resource, ready for use, contributing a specific functional role to production. Read more →
Subject Resource Role
The specific functional contribution a subject resource makes in producing a product. Read more →
Space-Infrastructure Role Pillar term
The role filled by space resources: supplying the location, environment, and structure in which activity occurs. Read more →
Operator Role
The role filled by people and equipment: transforming inputs into outputs by applying power and direction. Read more →
Direction Role
The role filled by information: carrying both the instruction to act and the specification of how, when, and where. Read more →
Financial Capacity Role
The role filled by money: funding the other resources. Read more →
Power Role
The role filled by energy: energizing the operator to perform. Read more →
Structural Resources
Resources used by performing a task directly; physically persistent, ready without transformation. Read more →
Supporting Resources
Resources consumed in enabling a structural resource to perform. Read more →
Constituent Resource
A resource requiring further refinement, incorporation, or combination before use. Read more →
Final Resource Pillar term
A finished resource requiring no further modification, ready to serve as a subject resource. Read more →
Resource Category Pillar term Course
One of the six functional groupings — Space, Equipment, Information, Money, Energy, People — into which every resource resolves. Read more →
Stage
The four-level granularity marking a resource’s proximity to readiness for use. Read more →
Substage
The sub-level granularity refining distinctions inside a stage. Read more →
Combination Resource
A resource whose constituent parts belong to more than one category. Read more →
Cross-Category Resource
A resource that changes category as a consequence of incorporation into another. Read more →
Distinguishing Resource
The syntactic category recognizing that a subject resource can be what separates different methods of performing the same activity. Read more →
Resource Product
A product eventually used as a subject resource by another system. Read more →
Diversified (Div)
The notation representing a range of admissible values for an activity or resource. Read more →
The Barcode Architecture
The fields, levels, and markers that assemble loci into a standardized, machine-readable barcode.
Labor Barcode
The four-field barcode capturing a job’s functional role in the economy. Read more →
Summary Barcode Course
The Enterprise Barcode covering at least forty percent of a company’s revenue, standing for its principal economic function. Read more →
Barcode Level
A horizontal cross-section of a barcode; each describes a different class of economic entity. Read more →
Barcode Section
A vertical cross-section of the Enterprise Barcode; each characterizes a different economic agent. Read more →
Barcode Field
The intersection of a section and a level, containing a locus and any markers. Read more →
Barcode Marker
An identifying tag adding interpretive information to a locus within a field. Read more →
Constituent Resource Locus (CRL) Pillar term Course
The locus describing the function of a constituent resource, typically paired with a Final Resource Locus. Read more →
Final Resource Locus (FRL) Pillar term Course
The locus describing the final resource into which a constituent resource is incorporated. Read more →
Internal Operations Loci Course
The Enterprise Barcode fields describing how the enterprise’s product is consumed inside the customer’s own system. Read more →
Product Tier
The grouping of a CRL, an FRL, and a Work Group Locus describing one instance of product usage. Read more →
Product Line
A revenue-producing product of a firm, used strictly with reference to the Enterprise Barcode. Read more →
Product Lining Course
The process of dividing a company’s revenue into functionally distinct barcodes. Read more →
Auxiliary Product Line
A product line not represented by the firm’s Summary Barcode. Read more →
Jumping
The coding practice of leaving an FRL blank while its paired CRL is filled. Read more →
Department Locus Pillar term
The barcode level identifying the department-level Work Group where the product is ultimately used. Read more →
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. Read more →
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. Read more →
Economic Agents and Relationships
The parties described in a barcode and how they relate to one another — enterprise, customer, intermediary, and the rest.
Enterprise
The economic agent whose product line is the subject of a given Enterprise Barcode. Read more →
Customer Course
The economic agent consuming the enterprise’s product as part of its own operations. Read more →
Customer of Customer
The economic agent consuming the customer’s product as part of its own operations. Read more →
Co-Customer
An economic agent using the enterprise’s product jointly with the customer. Read more →
Parallel Customer
The co-customer situation in which both parties hold the same contractual relationship to the enterprise. Read more →
Primary/Secondary Customer
The co-customer situation in which only one party holds a contractual relationship. Read more →
Intermediary Course
The economic agent acting on the enterprise’s product before the customer receives it. Read more →
Agent Intermediary
The intermediary supplying a networking function without taking possession. Read more →
Payer Intermediary
The intermediary subsidizing or paying the enterprise, enabling customer access. Read more →
With Inventory Intermediary
The intermediary taking inventory of the product and reselling it. Read more →
Terminality Course
The property determining where a chain of product usage stops, fixed at the customer’s Central Department Cycle. Read more →
Functional Information Systems
The applied, database-facing layer that turns the model into searchable, comparable functional data.
FIS Coordinates Pillar term
The applied coordinate values assigned to each business, job, and product in a functional information system. Read more →
Locus Functional Markers Pillar term
The coded functional references derived from the Production System Model and assigned to entities in the FIS database. Read more →
Production System Model
The model identifying the parts and processes necessary to produce a product, comprising the activities and the resources of production. Read more →
Functional Query
The retrieval method in which entities are found by functional coordinate rather than by keyword or code. Read more →
Functional Space Pillar term
The n-dimensional space in which functional locations are computed, compared, and traversed. Read more →
Multi-Attribute Classification
The classification approach in which an entity carries several simultaneous functional attributes rather than one exclusive industry code. Read more →
Unified FIS Coordinate-Based Representation
The single coordinate frame into which classification systems such as ISIC, HS, EBOPS, and ISCO are resolved. Read more →
Virtual Economics
The forward-looking extension of the model — what stays fixed and what stays open as the model looks toward its next application.
Bounded Order / Unbounded Fill Pillar term Course
The paired principle that the functional order is fixed while the actors, technologies, and outputs occupying it vary without limit. Read more →
Functional Twins Course
The accurate functional representations mirroring real-world resources and activities inside the model. Read more →
Economic Twin Course
The functional counterpart to the spatial twin supplied by GIS and the temporal twin supplied by the calendar. Read more →
Activity Axis Pillar term
The coordinate axis ordering each recurring economic activity and assigning it a position within the cycle. Read more →
Resource Axis
The coordinate axis ordering resources by functional role, category, and stage of readiness. Read more →
Related Ideas
Words and phrases that are not coined by Rory Riggs, but which make up the intellectual backdrop against which the pillar frameworks and supporting concepts above were built. 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.
Source-connected terms
Terms grouped by the source document in which their earliest dated evidence appears.
Granted U.S. patents — inventor Rory Riggs, assignee Locus LP: Functional Coordinates, Functional Coordinate System, Functional Location, Functional Space, Functional Proximity, Functional Trajectory, Functional Information System, Systems Syntax. See the dedicated Patents page for the full grant list.
Systems Economics: The Parts and Processes of Economic Systems (2019, 3rd edition, 294 pp.) — Locus Model, Locus Theory, Systems Economics, Theory of Economic Systems, Locus Language, Economic Physiology, Economic Morphology, Activity Cycle, Product Sequence, Money Sequence, Central Department Cycle, Supporting Cycles, Subject Resource Role, Structural Resources, Supporting Resources, Work Locus, Resource Locus, Enterprise Barcode, Labor Barcode, Summary Barcode, Terminality, Co-Customer, Customer of Customer, Product Lining, Internal Operations Loci.
Functional Information System — applied materials — FIS Coordinates, Locus Functional Markers, Production System Model, Functional Query.
Virtual Economics: A Portrait of an Economic System (forthcoming) — Functional Address, The Functional Triad, Economic Cartography, Natural Functional Order, Bounded Order / Unbounded Fill, Functional Twins, Economic Twin, Activity Axis, Resource Axis.
Patent-backed terms
The terms below are protected by specific granted U.S. patents; see Patents for the full record.
| Term | Patent |
|---|---|
| Functional Coordinates | US 9,910,910 · US 10,019,509 |
| Functional Coordinate System | US 9,910,910 · US 10,019,509 |
| Functional Location | US 11,657,026 · US 12,242,431 |
| Functional Information System (FIS) | US 8,990,268 · US 9,098,564 · US 9,361,358 |
| Functional Space | US 12,242,431 |
| Functional Trajectory | US 11,151,096 |
This lexicon documents 106 approved terms coined by or built specifically for Rory Riggs’s work, organized by where they sit in the model. Master index: Justia — complete Rory Riggs patent inventory.
