Yes, there is some institutional inertia that holds back the incumbents. However, there is also a huge store of knowledge about what to do and what not to do.
Here's a somewhat relevant story from my time at Boeing. When the 737-7/8/900 was being designed, some young bloods looked at the vertical stabilizer and said "Oh my God! Look at all this useless structure! We'll use cutting edge FEA and CATIA and show those old pencil-and-paper slide-rule jockeys how it's done." Everything looked great, and they started building the new aircraft in Renton. Except that during flight testing, they found that the new vertical stabilizer assembly was cracking. They had to stop the line (very expensive), remove assemblies from built aircraft (very expensive), and pay penalties to airline customers for delivery delays (astronomically expensive). If memory serves, they had to take a $1B writedown. There were also public firings of high-level executives.
Tesla may or may not be around to reap the rewards of their popularization of the electric car, but they've definitely made an impact, and done their part to push automotive thinking forward by at least a decade IMO.