Less competent in what? The people with decision-making power are supposed to be good at some combination of product innovation, product management, sales, marketing and accounting. ICs are only suited to making some decisions in the first two, and have next to zero expertise in the others.

I'm afraid "supposed to" is the operating word here.

In practice, the people who make the calls more often does not do so because they inherited a crap load of money, not because their own genius or hard work raised them to the top.