One of the latest buzzwords in politics and corporate governance has been “transparency.”  The New York Times reported on President Obama’s “new tone” of transparency, an academic research paper has in turn been written about the New York Times own level of transparency, and the idea of transparent corporate governance is all the rage today.  Ironically, the only long-standing body seeing a long and sustained push for transparency has been the government, and the new government is failing.

So the government fights against it but pushes for it in corporate governance and newspapers lobby for it but try themselves to not be subject to it.  This should instill confidence that transparency makes sense?

Vilified as the arch enemy of transparency, secrecy is eschewed as bad for shareholders, responsible for global warming and, well, perhaps the rot cause of President Obama’s smoking habit.  It was also the pointed focus of a New York Times article on Apple.

But is secrecy a bad thing?

While the Times article identifies the challenges Apple has faced in their goal to keep internal matters private (and to be fair, “internal matters” to Apple seems to mean anything that happens inside any of their buildings, and maybe in the airspace above their buildings...they’re about as guarded as the NSA on new product development), the article also identifies a core truth:

1. Most governance experts do seem to agree on one point: that the secrecy that adds surprise and excitement to Apple product announcements is not serving the company well in other areas.
   

So that sounds complimentary, right?  I did a quick search for the number of times MARKETING experts were asked about the benefits of GOVERNANCE....oddly, no relevant results were found.  Apparently, governance experts are also great marketeers.

And why is secrecy not “serving the company well”?  Other than the assertion that “transparency is critical”, there was little real insight.  Here is my insight:

1. Everyone heard everything about the Palm Pre.  Units sold in first weekend, 50,000.
   

2. The iPhone 3GS was kept under wraps and launched in typical Apple style.  Units sold in first weekend, 1,000,000.
   

Now, I don’t have any advanced degrees in corporate governance and I’m not a lawyer.  I’m an economist, a business consultant who focuses on market strategy, and a technologist.  Here’s a complex formula:

1. 1,000,000 > 50,000
   

Score one for the secrecy camp.