You start with product people, but if you do well enough making your product better doesn't really move the needle any more, so organizations tend to promote...

You start with product people, but if you do well enough making your product better doesn't really move the needle any more, so organizations tend to promote... marketing / sales /operations people. These people usually are pretty good at understanding what the customer wants and so has a decent feel for the product, perhaps innovation goes down, but the customer is getting what they want, but then once you saturate the market sales and marketing are no longer going to move the needle so you promote... Finance people. They usually don't have a great feel for product nor even what the customer wants, but they understand how to increase revenue and decrease costs and at this point in the company lifestyle that is what matters most. The risk is that you are in a competitive space where competitors are willing to jump on any product stumble. Often companies get stuck at this stage and stagnate, but usually they are so large and entrenched they keep doing just fine anyway.