The thing about company secrets is that once they're exposed (or guessed, or reverse engineered), then anyone can use them. This is essentially security through obscurity, but for ideas. It's not solid.

In particular, it's not a protection against an employee leaving and starting another company that does the same thing. As the employee, you thing that's good, but a business owner would think it's bad.

I know, that viewpoint doesn't help you personally. (Also, many times patents are overkill.) But a company owner may really not like your solution, because from their position, the weaker protections are a threat vector.