Originally published in Entrepreneur Magazine

By David Levin

The modern office was conceived at the turn of the 20th century by Frederick Winslow Taylor, imitating factory assembly lines, where clerks and executives could perform repetitive tasks with maximum efficiency. In recent years, our offices have changed to reflect the more collaborative nature of work, but meeting rooms have lagged behind.

Back in the Mad Men era, employees worked for a boss and gathered in his office for meetings. On the few occasions when a large room was needed, a secretary would book a suitable room. If a presentation was to be made, there would be flip charts and perhaps an overhead projector showing some slides to people in the room, watching through a haze of cigarette smoke.

Today, work has changed utterly. We all still have a boss, but we tend to work in collaborative, cross-functional clusters rather than within isolated reporting lines. Fewer people have offices to hold small meetings in, and almost no one has a secretary to book a room for a meeting. The end result, as anyone who works in an office knows, is groups of people wandering around looking for an open room. And then, minutes after finding an empty room, often getting kicked out by a late-arriving group.