"And, on a dollar basis, organisations can generate comparable or even higher rates of return through IT investments than R&D investment," he said.

Historically, for every dollar invested in IT, organisations receive back $1.95, the research found, even with such sensitive issues as the dot com boom and bust.

The research also found significant differences in the returns across IT investment groups, suggesting the market discriminates between IT investment types. It allows CIO to drill down into, for example, specific industry sectors and even specific investments within individual organisations, see the gains or losses for an IT investment, and, importantly, benchmark their own organisations against the market.

"It provides a little bit more accountability," Powell says. "We can tell the market sentiment towards different types of announcements. If the market reacts negatively to an announcement, perhaps the organisation has been overly optimistic in terms of in terms of projected cash flows or its cost of capital, for example."