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Very interesting indeed. Denning makes an excellent argument when he brings up the *opportunity cost* of thinking in terms of "profitability metrics" (reusing your term) in the context of outsourcing:

• The cost of the knowledge that is being lost, possibly forever.
• The cost of being unable to innovate in future, because critical knowledge has been lost.
• The consequent cost of its current business being destroyed by competitors emerging who can make a better product at lower cost.
• The missed opportunity of profits that could be made from innovations based on that knowledge that is being lost.

On another topic, the problems created by short term thinking reminded me of Stiglitz's argument in his book "Free Fall". Specifically, Stiglitz attributed the 2008 financial debacle to a large extent to the short sighted vision of Wall Street financial economics.