Say's Law

“The power of the Xerox copier did not lie in its capability to replace carbon paper and other existing copying technologies, but in its ability to perform services beyond the reach of those technologies. The 914 [copier] created a market for convenience copies that had previously not existed. Thirty copies of an existing document to share with a group of coworkers was not a need people knew they had before the invention of xerography. Since people couldn’t make thirty easily and inexpensively, no one articulated doing so as a ‘need’.

What we see operating in these cases of technology creating its own previously undreamed of uses is a variant of Say’s Law. Jean Baptiste Say, an early nineteenth century French economist, observed that in many situations, supply creates its own demand. People don’t know they want something until they see that they can have it; then they feel they can’t live without it.”

Reengineering the Corporation, Michael Hammer and James Champy, 1993.