The E10K -- the former Cray Business Systems Division purchased from SGI for a pittance -- made $1.2B in its first year as a product, and probably still stands as one of the most profitable acquisitions in the history of the industry. (And was due entirely to the adults in the room.) Yes, Sun was badly disrupted by x86 -- but not being able to adapt to economic disruption is really not the same as not being able to "figure out how to make people pay for it." (Indeed, those most fixated on immediate revenue are those for whom economic disruption is most difficult to counter.)

To be clear: Sun lost a microprocessor war first and foremost. In my opinion, Sun needed to respond to x86 by being even more iconoclastic than the company had the stomach for at the time: by buying AMD ca. 2004 and fighting the Intel cross-patent poison pill in court. So in the end, Sun's problem was arguably too many adults in the room, not too few...