Ahhh, my bad. I took your original take as a role where you would oversee other people, in opposition to an IC - who I presumed could only be "mid-level".

So yeah, I totally agree with you. Understanding the business is important in that sense. Especially when communicating the outcome of projects to non-technical stakeholders. I go out of my way on my current role to produce metrics that I can graph to show the positive outcomes of projects.

One of the things I learned is that non-technical people in particular love this sort of eye-candy. I don't say this in a derogatory way, it is a good way to communicate stuff.