Even in R&D and advertising intensive businesses, such as the pharmaceutical industry, strong IT investments can prove fruitful. The paper cited a project Pfizer which "enabled virtual teams from different business units around the world to collaborate in research and develop new drugs."

The researchers examined IT investment and financial data from 1998 to 2003.

Mithas said there is no reason to believe that anything has changed since then -- even with constantly changing technology.

The IT spending data was gleaned from surveys conducted by a consulting firm that the researchers didn't identify due to a non-disclosure agreement. Mithas could only say that the firm is among the top IT consulting companies in the world.

The absence of a identified source for the IT spending data in this paper drew criticism from , a former U.S. Department of Defense CIO and acting CIO of NASA who has written about the correlation of IT and profits.