Mine goes back almost 4 decades, and understanding the business and tradeoffs is largely hit and miss with executives at all levels (also ran two startups in the days before the web). I've dealt with CEOs who understood everything and those who knew less than nothing; also seen engineers who understood nothing in business or development or both and those with a great deal of knowledge who could suggest changes and improvements that made sense to everyone. But I think the negative versions were far more common than the positive ones in every kind and size of company.

Sometimes dumb people can still be lucky and make money (one place was dumb all around but their business was a unassailable monopoly, and another had 40 years of dumb customers who agreed to terrible annuities so failure would take decades to happen no matter what was done) and sometimes bad decisions or understanding in business or tech lead directly to failure.

There is no single type of success or failure in either business or tech.