I'm not John, but I'm one of the authors of the research paper. Indeed, one goal with this work is to complement DORA’s delivery metrics with similar correlations between code quality and its business impact.

Hopefully, this work can help developers when communicating with the product/business side. The sad reality is that without quantifiable metrics, short term targets will win over the long-term maintainability of the codebase. Only a minority of companies actively manage technical debt.