The reasons industry-leading companies reject new business models are captured in The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. And, per the book (and my experience), the executives are doing the same things: 1) few intelligent questions, 2) confidence that they know all business models, 3) rationalization that the industry is "mature" (read: no significant growth is possible).
The irony these days is that the iPod, iPhone, iPad, AppStore, Google, Android, Amazon, Kindle, and Facebook (to name a few) are all shaking up their respective industries while the EDA industry is sure that there is no significant growth potential. So, I guess, we have found the first industry in the last 60 years to be immune to innovation? No.
What the EDA industry's new business model should be:
1) Time-to-market value. Get the customers their chips/systems quickly and efficiently. This can be done.
2) If designs can be done quickly and efficiently, then IP will become both less expensive and more profitable. Look at the applications for iPhone/iPad and Android. People can write them in a couple of weeks and have them on sale in a day. Since they are written in an object-oriented framework, they work across various similar platforms and are very easy to migrate between disparate technologies (iPhone -> iPad -> Android -> x86 -> ARM). The IP industry will quickly change to this model if #1 is addressed.
3) Software "blocks" == hardware blocks. The choice of SW vs HW is should only be a matter of speed, power, time-to-market and cost.
4) Growth will come from an end-to-end value: Platform hardware through system and software integration.
By the way, the large fabs should REALLY be driving this because 32nm with 450mm wafers will be quite a challenge if most companies only need a couple thousand chips. If this new EDA business model creates 3000 new design starts, each with a 2 month design time, then the shuttles (multi-die wafers) with 10 or more designs on each one will make a LOT of sense and $$.
So, let's see if the industry will actually start asking questions or if it will continue to work hard at sustaining the status quo.