What The World of Difference is
The World of Difference is the model behind every MapsTell product: a world we built ourselves, with four Areas and sixteen Types. Thousands of names of mountains, cities, seas and rivers give language to behaviour in an accessible and effective way.
Certified Guides use two products to bring the model to life: the PersonalMap and the floormap.
How The World of Difference came about
Sebastiaan Rompa worked in cartography for many years and founded several publishing companies. Since the late 1990s, he has used associative cartography to map life and, later, business processes and strategies. When he began working with behavioural styles, the idea arose to map those too. Not in a graph or table, but as a landscape you can walk through, visit and explore.
What the map does that a thick report does not
A report tells you something about yourself. The map lets you explore it together with the people you work with. That is where insight becomes behaviour you can talk about and change.
“Cartography is full of imagery you can apply to behaviour. You can play with that beautifully.”
- Sebastiaan Rompa, founder of MapsTell
The map exists in two forms
The model provides the foundation. In practice, you work with two products that each do something different.
Frequently asked questions about The World of Difference
Below you will find the questions we hear most often, answered clearly and to the point.
What is The World of Difference?
The model underlying all MapsTell products: a map we created ourselves, with four Areas and sixteen Types, on which thousands of names of mountains, cities, seas and rivers say something about behaviour.
What is associative cartography?
Using a map as a carrier of information about something other than geography. At MapsTell that something is behaviour: topographical metaphors give words to how people communicate and work together.
Who created The World of Difference?
Sebastiaan Rompa, founder of MapsTell. He worked in cartography for years and has been involved in associative cartography since the end of the last century: mapping life, and later business processes and strategies as well.
How many words are there on the map?
Hundreds in The World of Difference, thousands in the PersonalMaps. Every name of a mountain, city, sea or river refers to behaviour. That volume is needed to do justice to the nuance: the same behaviour looks different in a crisis meeting than in a brainstorm.
Reading about a landscape is not the same as walking through it
MapsTell works with Guides in 20 countries, and Heller still speaks with them personally. However you choose to contact us, you can always reach the people at the heart of MapsTell. You can start with a 30-minute Discovery Call. We would much rather hear what you are working on than tell you what we sell. And if we feel that MapsTell is not right for your situation, we will say so.
