If you aren't a software products or services company (engine of revenue), won't IT always be a cost center? If you are in IT at a bank, in retail, logistics, telecom, O&G, even trading, if what you produce isn't what you sell, then is IT not a cost center?

If you were the CEO at a retail giant, like Target, how would you account for IT's in/out budget and expectations?

I'm frankly amazed that Xerox PARC got away with being unaccountable rogues (with great unmonetized results!) for so long given that they didn't support the revenue side of the house one little bit. (Amazing place and time, though! And the director of the lab appears to have been a hell of a manager of unruly computer scientists!)