Vulcan, West Virginia isn’t really a town – it’s too small.
It was built in the coal-mining boom of the 1950s, but by the 1970s it was a shell of itself – just 20 families lived there.
Vulcan was next to Tug river.
One side of the river was West Virginia; the other side was Kentucky.
The children had to cross the river to get to school, but the bridge was so old and rotten it had collapsed, so the children had to illegally climb over a padlocked railroad fence and then scramble across a railway bridge, under freight cars, to get to school.
One child lost part of his leg doing this.
Vulcan’s 20 families elected John Robinette as ‘mayor’ to speak for them.
He asked the officials of Mingo county if they’d build a bridge.
They said they had bigger problems.
So he asked the state officials of Kentucky if they’d build a bridge.
They said they had bigger problems.
So he asked the state officials of West Virginia if they’d build a bridge.
They said they had bigger problems.
So he asked the government in Washington DC if they’d build a bridge.
They said they had bigger problems.
It became clear to Mayor Robinette what his competition was – it was these bigger problems.
He had to elevate his bridge up the list of their problems somehow.
In 1977 just about the only problem anyone cared about was Russia, this was the height of the Cold War, each side was looking for any propaganda advantage over the other.
Mayor Robinette realised there was no point complaining to the people at the bottom of government, they just kept ignoring him, he needed to provoke the people at the top, he needed to get their attention.
So he wrote to the Russian embassy in Washington DC.
He told them the story about the poverty-like conditions that the people of Vulcan, West Virginia were living in, he told them America couldn’t even afford to build a bridge.
He said he knew that Russia had a foreign aid budget for impoverished countries, he asked if the Russian foreign aid budget could help build a bridge where America couldn’t afford to do it.
The Russians knew this would be a major propaganda coup, they immediately allocated a reporter, Iona Andronov, to visit Vulcan.
Andronov would write the story about how the US couldn’t support its own people, how the poor people of America were crying out to Russia for help.
But the Russian embassy had to apply for permission from the US State Department before making the trip.
When they did, the US government wanted to know why a Russian reporter was going to the middle of nowhere in America.
When they heard the story about Vulcan’s bridge, things began happening: this could embarrass the US worldwide.
The government told the state to fix it, NOW.
The state told the county to fix it, NOW.
And, within a few hours, Mayor Robinette was notified that $1.3m ($5.2m today) was approved to build a new bridge for Vulcan.
Suddenly all those bigger problems just went away.
Because Mayor Robinette had found a way to elevate his little problem above all the others.
Which is what a creative person does – that’s our job.
We don’t keep competing inside a competitive set where we can’t win.
We change the competitive set, change the perspective.
We get upstream of the problem.
So that, in a different context, something small becomes very big.