The story
A shortening of build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. Derived from the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods. (1855).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.