I agree that knowing how to code is not utmost necessary. But don't you think it's highly important and, at least,very close to necessary? An idea/product guy will never come up with a solution he didn't know was technically viable. So his pool of solutions is more limited than that of a hacker. He'll also waste time overthinking ideas that are not technically viable. So he's not as efficient.
You don't need both legs to run a marathon. But it's so important to have them both. That it's no coincidence that every great runner has them both.
Yes, but to some extent only. (and typically the "idea guys" don't have a clue of the technical reality behind their "genius" idea)
To me, there's actually a difference between knowing how to code and knowing the technology. You can know how things work and what's technically possible without really knowing how to code it.
But this goes both ways too: developers don't necessarily have a good product sense, and without knowing about interaction and design patterns for example, or know what the current product landscape looks like, they would also be limited in their implementations. My comment above was mostly to contradict comments like the parent, that are fairly common: hackers can do it all, knowing how to code is the most important thing. Coding is not important. Knowing what can be coded is.
You don't need both legs to run a marathon. But it's so important to have them both. That it's no coincidence that every great runner has them both.