That I recall, the RISC-V instruction set was created by looking at existing RISC instructions, industry demands, and so on. The result was a pretty good baseline that was unencumbered by patents or I.P. restrictions. From there, simulators and reference hardware emerged. Unlike many toys, the Rocket CPU was designed and prototyped with a reasonable flow on 45nm and 28nm. Many others followed through with variants for embedded and server applications with prior MIPS and SPARC work showing security mods will be next.

Them not having every industrial tool available doesn't change the fact that the research, from ISA design to tools developed, was quite practical and with high potential for adoption in industry. An industry that rejects almost everything out of academia if we're talking replacing x86 or ARM. Some support for my hypothesis comes from the fact that all kinds of academics are building on it and major industry players just committed support.

Is it ideal? No. I usually recommend Gaisler's SPARC work, Oracle/Fujitsu/IBM for high-end, Cavium's Octeons for RISC + accelerators, and some others as more ideal. Yet, it was a smart start that could easily become those and with some components made already. Also progressing faster on that than anything else.