Focus on the territories, forget about the maps

Most of us have seen that regions shown as part of India in maps published by the Government of India, are shown as parts of Pakistan, or China or merely ‘disputed’, in other maps.Clearly, both sets of maps cannot be correct… and the map is not necessarily the territory. In fact often, one knows that the map does NOT reflect the territory.The problem however, is that often the lack of congruence is forgotten and decision makers focus on the map, not the territory.Such confusion is also common in the marketing and branding landscape.