A Keurig sits on our office counter. We use it daily. Quick, fresh coffee, one cup at a time.

And often when I pop in a K-Cup, I think about John Sylvan.

He invented the K-Cup system in the 1990s, aiming to give office workers a cheaper, faster alternative to their daily Starbucks run. An environmentally neutral solution to all those paper cups piling up in office trash bins.

Now he wishes he hadn’t.

The system exploded far beyond office break rooms, into millions of homes (including mine). The used little plastic pods could circle the earth more than 10 times.

Every year.

This isn’t only about coffee pods. It’s about how product success can spiral beyond your original vision – sometimes with uncomfortable consequences.

Think about it:

• Instagram was meant for sharing vacation photos, not destroying teen mental health
• Ring doorbells were designed to catch package thieves, not create surveillance networks police would use to access homes without a warrant
• Bottled water was marketed as a premium (or often, safer) alternative to tap, not to generate islands of plastic waste
• On-demand delivery seemed like convenient consumer choice, not a tidal wave of single-use packaging. Every Amazon box and Uber Eats bag represents another hit to our landfills — multiplied by billions of transactions. (And I’m not even getting into all the emissions from millions of daily dedicated deliveries!)

This is why I dedicated Chapter 21 of I Need That to what I call “Compelling Responsibly.” When we build products people truly need, we have to think beyond the initial problem-solution fit. We need to consider what happens when we succeed, and our solution scales to millions of users.

The “flip” from want to need carries real responsibility. Your success could shape behaviors, impact environments, and change social patterns in ways you never imagined. Sometimes that impact is positive — like how ride-sharing reduces drunk and stoned driving.

Sometimes it’s not. (Like those billions of K-Cups.)

Action for today: Put your product under the lens of mass adoption. What happens when a million people use it regularly? How about ten million? Are you ready for consequences you never imagined?

Laurier

Product Payoff: Success blindsided Crocs founders too. They created fugly-but-comfy shoes for boating. When healthcare workers discovered them, sales blew up — and spawned a flood of petroleum-based foam shoes that will outlast civilization. Today, Crocs leads the industry in recycling programs and bio-based materials.