Displacement rate
This is the distinction velocity strategies miss. Growth-rate is one variable. Displacement-rate is the other. A piece of work shipped in January 2024 that is still doing useful work in January 2027 has beaten a piece shipped weekly that was obsolete by Friday.
Published 23 April 2026 in The Forest Floor Is The Product
01 · Introduced in
23 Apr 2026
In the Lens Lexicon
- Definition
- The share of what you have built that loses its job after one specific large change in its environment.
- The test
- If the most likely large change in the next 18 months happened tomorrow, what fraction of this would lose its job?
- Common confusion
- Mistaken for obsolescence risk. Obsolescence is vague decay. Displacement is always indexed to one named change, which is the only version you can defend to a stranger.
From the Lens Lexicon card, published with The Lens Lexicon on 2 May 2026
02 · Also in
3 pieces
Every other piece whose text uses the term, oldest first, with the sentence where it first does. The list is read from the essays each time the site is built.
- The Human LayerThe Displacement Rate Audit
“The Displacement Rate Audit is a free five-minute tool for asking that question before reality asks it for you.”
2 min
- Systems & LawsStart Here: What Survives When The Surface Changes?
“That surviving fraction is the honest measure of durability, and it is the inverse of what I call your displacement rate.”
6 min
- Systems & LawsThe Lens Lexicon
“It defines substrate, canopy, displacement rate, succession, climax community, pioneer species, disturbance, mycorrhizal coupling, monoculture risk, and old-growth.”
2 min
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