Commodore's biggest problem in a nutshell was the corporate in-fighting that hamstrung the company to varying degrees over the years.
For reasons best known to the Commodore departmental heads, they chose to "supplement" the successful C64 with the Plus4 and C16, which were neither cross compatible nor any significant advance in technology. The latter machines weren't exactly a runaway sales success and drained valuable R&D expenditure.
The C128 was a logical step, but again in practice Commodore must have made the machine very expensive to manufacture thanks to it's dual architecture (It was fitted with a Z80 in order to run CPM).
Then we have the Amiga debacle. Commodore scored a great coup with the Amiga purchase, but singularly failed to invest in it's future until way too late. Competing Commodore PC projects led to reduced funding for Amiga R&D, hence the various hardware botches that you can still see today on your A4000.
Utimately, those held in favour with the management did quite well if the stories of alleged fund transfers into offshore accounts just prior to collapse are to be believed.
