Counting crowds has become an important tool in retail: that is, watching where people go in a store to better understand how they look at products and make purchase decisions.

It's a lesson that commercial real estate should learn, argues George Shaw, CEO of Pathr, a software vendor that provides tools to study the movement of people in buildings without collecting identifying information, to better preserve privacy. Originally designed for the retail industry, Pathr is expanding to other industries, including commercial real estate.

"Thinking about office buildings, where we're doing work with an operator of quite a few office buildings worldwide, they wanted to understand how long someone is willing to wait for an elevator," Shaw tells GlobeSt.com. "How long am I going to wait tomorrow if I arrive at 9am versus 10 am? How long will I wait for a treadmill at the gym? How long will I wait for coffee? When a tenant shows up, are they greeted by the guard?"