Do you have ideas for how academia can be brought back into touch, or is it a lost cause?
There are many reasons why this is difficult, but the primary obstacle is the tenure system.
Recruiters tend to get confused when someone turns at their doorstep with a PhD ("which marks did you get?"), and academics tend to not have a clue of what's the benefit of industrial experience (in spite of being effectively "agile" product managers themselves when participating in, say, a European Framework project).