The vital rule of R&D
In an ultra-connected world where the volubility of social media imposes its law on information, confidentiality has become a precious asset. Wikileaks and the Snowden affair bear witness to this: it seems almost impossible today to keep a secret. Yet there is one environment where confidentiality still seems natural — the company. While internet users are accustomed to sharing their private lives, sometimes in the smallest details and without restraint on Facebook or Twitter, one never sees them — except in very rare cases — recounting their working day. And for good and simple reason: there is an implicit rule established that "everything that happens within the company, stays within the company."
This rule is vital and necessary. It is a form of professional hygiene. In certain environments, such as banking, confidentiality is a sacred duty. The same applies to innovative companies operating in the R&D sector — especially when they are mandated to place their innovation at the service of external providers. Confidentiality then becomes a strategic issue that must be watched at every moment.
For this, legal tools exist, such as confidentiality agreements. A first form is the bilateral or mutual contract, which engages both parties under the same conditions. A start-up launching itself, for example, will want to keep its project secret for as long as possible and has every interest in doing so. It will therefore have all the entities with which it will interact sign confidentiality agreements (investors, subcontractors, potential clients).
This document exists in multiple forms: some contracts fit on a single page while others extend over more than thirty pages. The most important thing is to maintain mutual respect for commitments. Another form of binding contract is the unilateral confidentiality agreement — such as the engineers' commitment contract signed when joining a new company. This internal document guarantees that the employee will not go to work for the competitor or divulge confidential data about the company. It should be noted that even if legal contracts have the force of law, they always refer to very complicated matters to argue in the context of confidentiality affairs. The virtue of these agreements is therefore essentially psychological. Signing one is a necessary step, even if not sufficient, to lay the healthy foundations of a collaboration.
Beyond legal protections, it is essential for companies to take all necessary precautions so that no information leaks from within the company. These are the foolproof guarantors of confidentiality. One very simple measure consists, for example, of giving a code name to projects. Once this precaution is taken, these identifiers are used systematically, including in relations with subcontractors. The utmost attention to detail will be pushed across all documents to remove the client's name and thus avoid the risk, for example, of a visit from another of the company's clients.
Finally, there are ethical presuppositions. Guaranteeing clients the confidentiality of a project also means accepting that one will not approach their competitor on an identical or similar project. Although this principle seems self-evident, one can never be too prudent. Which brings us to the question of guarantees.
Despite all foreseeable precautions, one must face the obvious: one can never guarantee confidentiality 100%. All the contracts in the world are incapable of preventing a secret from leaking out on their own. Experts acknowledge that it is extremely difficult to prove that an idea has been stolen. As everyone knows, ideas float in the air and great minds meet… These proverbs will always be there to justify the coincidence of a shared idea. How then to protect oneself from the unfortunate leaks of overly talkative collaborators? One can always reinforce the clauses of a contract, but if too many constraints are imposed, the risk is to undermine a good and healthy collaboration. And all the precautions in the world will not prevent a careless act or an accidental leak. A famous anecdote to illustrate this point is that of the acquisition of Elf by Total. Indeed, while the two giants were waging a fierce war to see who would prevail and swallow the other, the story was apparently changed due to a conversation between two bankers who were evoking the merger in question, and whose board of Total overheard on a plane… Thus, in addition to the need to armour the contractual aspect, genuine awareness work must be carried out with collaborators — and this part is difficult to master.
In the end, one sees that the question of confidentiality meets that of reputation. For it is obvious that a company that did not adhere to these principles guaranteeing this ethical posture would end up being sanctioned by its partners in the short, medium, or long term. Let us not forget that today our world is a village and it is very easy to make it known to the entire world that a company has not respected the rules of confidentiality. The loop is therefore closed: if confidentiality has become a precious and difficult asset to preserve due to a hyper-connected world, because we live in a global village, companies that are too talkative can lose their reputation in the blink of an eye.
