I used to (half) joke about another option: (d) it could be cost effective for a company to spend money hiring and wasting excellent talent if it prevents their competitors from doing something genuinely valuable with that talent.
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Unlikely. No "talent" would agree to waste their life in such a scenario, worrying about "being found out for not contributing to the bottom line".
That's kinda what makes them a talent — almost a tautology.
I dunno, money talks
For a short while, maybe.
"Excellent talent" means a strong inner drive, it takes something like an obsession to put in the grind to get there. The feeling of contributing and creating and playfulness and attacking new frontiers is non-negotiable. You lose it, you're no longer "excellent talent".
No money can replace that (though life circumstances may force a detour — that's why it's almost a tautology, but not quite).
"Being found out for not contributing"? You know you can do better.
There could be cases where exceptional talent is kept motivated on exciting cutting edge projects, but those projects don't "contribute to the bottom line", either because the project is canned or doesn't generate enough profits (or cut enough costs) or some other reason. The chances are that these cases wouldn't be an intentional waste of talent, but if you've been around a while you sometimes start to wonder.