In this context I just don't consider "IT" to be a stop word. Optimizing for stop words seems a bit redundant?? Just seems that you are taking away valuable optimize real estate.. :-)

I posted my thoughts on the subject a few weeks back as well..

http://www.saasaffiliates.com/blog/84/stop-words-search-engine-optimization/

In the thread, he said "IT company" shows IT company results, but when he adds a geolocation to the phrase that's when there's a problem.

In some cases where IT is different then It or it I think that SEO can be done.

I can't recreate any problems for searching on IT companies with a geolocation attached. Though it does only brings up a local 7 pack when you change the term to IT consulting + "city" for me. Originally though the question was "can you optimize for stop words". The answer is clearly... it depends. Multi-word terms like "what is it" and "what the hell" (some funny image results) can be optimized including the stop words. Take the stop words out like "the" and "is" and the term takes on a whole new meaning. Now if you do something as subtle as compare results for the terms "construction in san jose" and "construction san jose" you get nearly identical results (I see 2 results trade places). Putting effort into optimizing for the word "in" here is obviously a waste. Like so many things in SEO, it all depends on what you are trying to do.